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This episode of TGTV was recorded live and on location at the poster session, or Information Fair, at APH’s 2013 Annual Meeting.
Although it’s called the Information Fair, the task that I gave people was really unfair.
I asked people who came by to look at a print image and, without any preparation or context, to talk about how they would go about adapting
that print image into a readable tactile graphic for blind students.
I gave people a choice of three print images with three levels of complexity.
The first one is a small street map, where the task for students is to find the shortest route between two locations marked on the map.
The task for teachers or transcribers would be to adapt this so that braille labels could be fit in and easily associated with the proper streets.
The print has graphic images to represent the park and so on, and it uses different font sizes and orientations of print—all of which, of course,
are no-no’s for tactile and braille adaptations.
The second image is a water cycle diagram done in a depth perspective view.
We have a snow-capped mountain; we have trees in the foreground receding to the background; we have streams, lakes, oceans,
clouds, water vapor rising and lots of arrows and labels showing all the possible forms of water flow and vapor movement.
The third diagram is a stick-figure diagram of a lever being used to lift a load.
Sections of the lever on each side of the fulcrum are labeled and indicated with dimension lines.
There are also labels with arrows connecting to other features of the system which make this deceptively simple diagram
tricky to render in tactile form.
So here are clips from some of the discussions at the APH Information Fair.
There’s not a lot of heavy content in this episode, but it does show that teachers generally have good intuitions that guide them
[Dinging bell]
even if they are unfamiliar with tactile graphic design, which several people were. So, bravo teachers!
[fanfare and crowd cheering]
And with apologies for the somewhat garbled sound of the recording, TGTV is once again On the Air!
[Reggae music]
Now, I’ll let you pick which image you want to discuss. We can talk about one of the easier ones, or the very hard one,
or the easy-to-moderate one. Let’s go with this one.
Okay, so if you were doing a tactile version of this, what would be your approach? What kinds of things might you do?
Okay. First thing that comes to mind from the teaching perspective is, in addition to the critical points that are already labeled, I might
also label the horizontal line which we would consider the ground.
At the point where I would be teaching this, I would at least reference that with the student so they wouldn’t mistake the line on the lower part
of the screen with the line that represents the fulcrum or the lever.
Right, we’re not talking about part of the mechanism here. It’s just a baseline ground.
The other thing I might consider, unless it would make it more challenging, because we have a couple labels that are presented
underneath the diagram, maybe a wider line with some texturing to designate the ground.
I like to be grounded, as you can see. But getting beyond that, the lines which are curved
that represent the load arm versus the effort arm;
it appears in the picture that they are thinner; perhaps that could even be a broken line.
But distinguish that clearly from the bolder, thicker line which is the lever.
But there are two segments to the lever. So the first question that I would be conscious of
would be making the difference between these lines that designate the two portions significantly different from the lever.
The load seems to be pretty straightforward.
Oh, the arrows. There’s an interesting thing. I think the arrows are helpful. In the teaching of it, one might need to guide the student, unless
they’ve had enough familiarity with arrows, so that they would not mistake that the exact point where the arrow’s touching the lever to be a
significant point but that it refers to the whole thing.
Something like this is troublesome to me because you’ve got the label “fulcrum” way down here below the ground and the arrow comes up.
It appears to be part of the mechanism instead of just a labeling lead line.
And if you were worried about a student generalizing and saying, “What is a fulcrum?”
They’re often times depicted as a triangle. The apex of the triangle would be the point where the fulcrum moves.
You could have a student mistakenly think that a fulcrum has a line coming up through the center.
It’s not a huge problem as long as you provide the guidance with it to help a student not over-generalize.
Are there ever instances where there would be comments regarding elements of the diagram underneath; maybe a reference to the arrows?
“Please be careful to note that the arrow lines are providing direction or drawing your attention to a particular point, but in no way should be
conceived as part of the actual diagram”?
Well, just instructional tips. “Note: Pay attention to this part.” I’ve always been in favor of that sort of thing. But in practice, it never happens.
It never works, because space is an issue...?
I think you’ll just find that transcribers in general are a lot of times reluctant to add their own, to step in and play the role of the teacher.
[Reggae music]
Okay, well, now we’re talking with... - Brian Darcy. From...
- The Idaho Educational Services for the Deaf and the Blind.
Okay Brian, we’re going to put you on the hot seat here. I’ve got here three graphics; I’ll let you choose one.
Let’s go with number one.
The task here for the student is to find their way from Bragg and 25th Streets up to the park.
We want to turn this print graphic in a readable tactile graphic.
- Well, knowing very little about tactile graphics and braille, but knowing about space for labeling, one of the things I see is
there’s a 25th and a 25th with no connecting area in between those two. You’d make sure you had a delineation to know that 25th ends
at Prince, and then restarts again at Whistler's, so there’s no confusion.
This is one of the things that happens in print; when you have a narrow space like that, you can shrink the font down and put it vertically.
You don’t really have that option in braille. You can’t shrink braille, so you would probably have to stretch, expand the image.
- Would you also, out of curiosity, put "24th Street and behind it runs North and South"?
- Maybe put some delineation that says numbered streets run north and south...?
Like a transcriber’s note or something to point out some tricky parts?
- Right, that would point out some of the things to recognize about the map.
- In print, the font is sideways and going north and south for those that are going north and south, and the same for east and west.
- When you label them, they’re not going to show that way. That would be a giveaway for the print.
- You would need to label that below.
- With our transcribers, we’ve got a couple, and they’re top-notch. They constantly re-check themselves and say, “Wait a minute, let me
read the map,” rather than just transcribing it. “Let me read it. Let me see how I would use it.” That’s why it takes so long.
[Reggae music]
We’re talking with...
-- Frank Irzyk, with the Pennsylvania Training and Technical Assistance Center.
-- Let’s go with the science one.
-- I guess the way I would approach it is to remove some of the arrows, to allow the student to be able to see exactly what they're
looking at. Remove these arrows and just leave most of the descriptions here to point up so the student can have a good look at the fulcrum.
-- I personally would think with some of these materials, give the student a point of reference.
-- When I did this many years ago with students, we would go out to the see-saw and look at it at that point. Luckily, the see-saw,
you could move the fulcrum. We had fairly large students and relatively small students, that we could level the weight between the two.
-- Otherwise, I think that this would work. I just worry about too much in the lines here.
Now we’re talking with...
- Joe Catavero.
- Go to the water one; the water cycle.
- Okay. I guess I would create a model; and bring in items to create this. I’d have trees, sticks and I’d buy material to build this.
You all can chime in too, Paula.
---- You have to pick out have many different textures you’re going to use. You don’t want too many textures. You’ve got a lot
of different surfaces in this. It’s going to be a complex graphic. You’ve got water, you’ve got land, you’ve got trees, and it looks like
you’ve got a mountain. Then you’ve got clouds and vapor precipitation; that’s so hard to put into a graphic.
So I’m not sure I’d put this into a graphic in the first place, because there’s so much in there. This would be a nightmare as a graphic.
- Yet, this is something I‘ve seen on tests.
---- I would have to see what the point is in the first place before I would put this into a graphic, because this is a very complex graphic.
---- Maybe you wouldn’t even include this. It just depends on what it is they’re doing.
---- All this other stuff is eye candy.
- What information are you trying to get over to the student?
[Reggae music]
> You look at it, and you think, “What is the point?” It’s about evaporation and the whole cycle, right? The water cycle?
Yeah.
> Look at all the different terminologies. As you said, the last one you showed me pictures of--
> How do you put this in writing; water vapor? It’s hard for all people to understand what water vapor is.
> If I was teaching someone who couldn’t read the printed word, you can at least maybe bring them to an experiment of how you make vapor.
[Reggae music]
I’m not sure, because I think it would be difficult to feel a difference between the lead line and the lever.
Maybe, if instead the lead lines went straight to one end or the other. Is this a certain distance here that they want to convey?
I’m not sure if that would do it. I just know that lead lines are important. It would probably have to be a different width, like this is a different
width. I think that the lead line is really important.
I don’t know that I would go to the right and then straight up. I would go straight there. I think that’s going to add confusion.
Maybe this fulcrum, I would want to make that whole thing solid, instead of a line and a line. I would want that whole thing to be raised.
And I think this person over here needs to not be a stick person, because that is just one more stick and line. Whether it be a line lead,
or a lever, it’s just too hard to tell it’s a person.
And I think that’s about all I can offer. I had one one-hour class!
That’s a pretty impressive analysis.
Thank you very much, Fred.
[Reggae music]
--- Nancy Niebrugge.
--- I would take these four small symbols and probably simplify them and create a legend, so you would know there is a playground,
and a lake, and ball fields, and a dog walking area;
so that those were simplified symbols.
--- And there would be a key to those. I think that you
would have difficulty in trying to identify these shorter streets with small type for your route.
--- And of course it’s difficult to be reading braille on different axes. Ideally, 25th Street should be going this way.
--- Is that enough to work with? Sure!
[Reggae music]
I don’t even know what that means. Does that mean a little pond and baseball fields?
I might put little signs up there and then have a place down here that’s a key to them. I wouldn’t do the bat and the ball and the square;
just a little small square. This would be too confusing.
[Reggae music]
Well, you made it through that audio jungle, and here are a few things to think about until we meet again to revisit these drawings.
Remember that a couple of the participants suggested that we could help the readers by including written notes along with the tactile
graphic to draw their attention to certain features or explain certain attributes of the drawings.
Now this isn’t something that we can really do in standard practice, but the suggestion indicates that these teachers really have an intuitive
understanding for how challenging this task is for the tactile reader and for the transcribers.
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but when it comes to tactile pictures, we have the urge to fall back on our verbal descriptions
because we understand how much they can help to bring meaning to the tactile reading experience.
So while this doesn’t offer any easy solutions, the impulse indicates that our hearts and our thinking are pointed in a good direction out of our
concern for the learning experience of the reader.
Now in regards to this complicated water cycle drawing, there were suggestions that we create a model or somehow do a physical
demonstration of these processes. Again, that comes out of a recognition that this is really complex, really difficult to portray in a tactile form
because of how many processes and labels are crammed into this print image.
Remember also it was suggested we try to find out what exactly what is important for the student to learn from this and focus on that information.
Perhaps that means we can clear out a lot of material from this diagram and make it more readable.
Remember, there was a suggestion that we don’t do this in tactile form at all.
These are all things to think about.
Finally, remember in discussions about this lever diagram that most of the discussion focused on all of the lead lines and dimension lines and
arrows that point out features of the graphic, which in its essence is very simple.
Now in another TGTV episode, we’ll look at these drawings again, and I’ll suggest approaches that might make them into readable
form; not to suggest that there is one solution for any of these.
Until we come to that episode, give these drawings some thought. Mull over in your mind how you might approach each one, and see if
your ideas match up in any way with mine when we meet again.
[Reggae music]