Thomas Logan and I met with Chancey Fleet at New York Public Library’s Andrew Heiskell Braille and Talking Book Library. We explored the library where we found many books filled with the dots of Braille. The labels on the ends of the book stacks had the Dewey Decimal System in text and Braille.
It was exciting to see stacks and stacks of books with Braille.
We saw a variety of tactile and Braille technology. One caught our attention.
What Is an Interactive Tactile Graphics Display?
Chancey showed us Graphiti® from Orbit Research, which is an interactive tactile graphics display. It provides non-visual access to graphical information, such as charts, drawings, maps, and images.
This allows blind and low vision users to experience graphics in real-time on an array of 2,400 independently refreshable pins organized in 40 rows and 60 columns. The screen can display shapes, graphs, diagrams, and maps. It has the ability to set each pin to a different height to show different elements such as colors, shades, and topography information in maps.
The device connects to computers, smartphones, and specific talking graphing calculators through USB or Bluetooth. The system sends image information from the screen and recreates what’s on the screen on the Graphiti with the pins. The device also has an HDMI port that can connect to microscopes, telescopes, and video cameras to recreate the images in a tactile way.
The tablet can be used as a drawing board. Users can draw with a finger or use multi-touch gestures, such as pinch-and-zoom. What the user creates on the device can be sent to a calculator or other device to create the graph visually. Graphiti also provides haptic (vibrations) feedback.
Test-Driving the Interactive Tactile Graphics Display
Meryl sat down in front of the Graphiti tablet while Thomas played camera person slash narrator and filmed the action. Here’s the video.
Transcript: A11y Rainbow Graphiti
girl is going to create a image with your fingers a masterpiece okay that is pretty cool all right so now we freeze it by pressing the six button which is this button so we have frozen the image and now chansey fleet will explore this artistic masterpiece whoa i see like potentially a rainbow and an a and a one and a one and a y my gosh that's pretty great
The video begins with Meryl doubting her artistic abilities as she tries to figure out what to draw on the tablet. An idea comes to her as she points to her sweatshirt with a rainbow and a11y beneath it.
Meryl proceeds to draw three arcs of the rainbow with her left index finger. Next, she writes “A11y” below the rainbow. After finishing, Meryl points to her drawing with pride and gives two thumbs up.
Meryl gets up out of the chair to switch places with Chancey. She puts her hands on the drawing.
Graphiti is a compelling technology that let us have a new collaborative experience. And, as the infomercials say, there’s more!
Tactile Graphics Embosser
The library’s Dimensions Project makes it possible for anyone, blind and sighted, to create tactile graphics, 3D models, and documents. Their labs are free and bookable by appointment. They also offer studio workshops. The only thing patrons pay for is paper and filament.
Do you live in New York and work in tech or design? They would love volunteers to help make visual media more accessible. Chancey’s videos delve into these various community tools for creating tactile graphics and objects.
Transcript: About the Dimensions Project at NYPL Andrew Heiskell Braille Talking Book Library
So, Dimensions Project here at New York Public Library Andrew Haskell Braille Talking Book Library helps blind and sighted people and organizations create 3D models, tactile graphics, Braille business cards, documents, and more. Our labs are free and bookable by appointment. And so are our skill building workshops. The only thing you'll ever pay for here is paper and filament.
And we also welcome volunteers from the tech and design communities to come and help us make more previously visual media accessible. We believe that we don't live in a text-only world and that the images are for everyone and together we can create meaningful assets to spatial data like charts, graphs, art, and anything else that you can imagine.
Chancey showed us the ViewPlus Columbia with Power-Dot Braille. It’s an embosser that can print standard braille with high-resolution tactile graphics. It has the ability to create different dot heights to produce a diversity of tactile graphics.
In this video clip, you can view an example of what Columbia can do.
Transcript: Upper and Lowercase Cursive Alphabet
So, this is an upper and lowercase cursive alphabet. We found the person in the branch who has the best handwriting and immortalized it and digitized it. And we use the tactile graphics embosser from ViewPlus called the Columbia to create a large-scale tactile rendering of this cursive alphabet because lots of blind people even people that don't typically identify as highly interested in tactile graphics do feel some kind of way about their handwriting and they'd like to know what cursive letters are like so that they can practice improving their handwriting.
So, that's what this is. Each upper and lower case letter are joined together and anybody can print one of these out and take it home free of charge.
This embosser works with Touching the News, a project from the Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired. These are topical tactile graphics for anyone to download and explore that are newsworthy. Chancey shows an example of Touching the News with the International Space Station. She explains how it works.
Transcript: Touching the News
So, the Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired based in San Francisco, where I happen to be a board member launched a project called Touching the News and periodically issues graphics that are for anybody to download and explore that are newsworthy. Each graphic includes the graphic itself with labels and then an accompanying key that explains any abbreviations that are being used along the narrative and that narrative gives you more context as you explore the graphic.
This one, in particular, is the International Space Station and you can see that the living quarters and the science quarters and the whole space that's inhabited by people is much smaller than the solar arrays that are bracketing it on both sides.
Using 3D Printers and Fusers to Create Tactile Items
The library has 3D printers that the public can use. Thomas and I saw the LulzBot TAZ and the Ultimaker3. Are you familiar with the works of Keith Haring? One of his works includes the Statue of Liberty. Here’s the original Haring Statue of Liberty.
We also learned about the ZY®-Fuse Heater, a swell form graphics machine that heats carbon-based ink to raise lines on microcapsule paper. This machine can create tactile maps, diagrams, text, and graphics. It uses swell touch paper.
You’d print like you would using a printer or copier to put the image onto the swell paper. Then, run the paper into the swell form graphics machine. As the paper goes through, the heat reacts with the ink. This causes the paper to swell and create a tactile image.
The quarantine gave Chancey the opportunity to learn more about Haring’s work and create a tactile version.
Transcript: 3D-Printing and the Statue of Liberty
So, during quarantine, I had the opportunity to pursue some personal passions in 3D-printing and I've got to know some artists better, including Keith Haring. This is the Statue of Liberty by Keith Haring with a traditional tactile graphic when you only have a couple dot heights to work with something that has lots of variation in color can be really challenging, so you might have to really simplify it or risk producing a tactical image that's blurry or confusing and that's when you can resort to 3D-printing and create a 2.5D release that has a lot of depth in variation without figures getting lost in front of or behind other figures.
So, this one you can clearly see in the upper left-hand corner of the Statue of Liberty, she's holding her torch aloft. She's got a crown, a spiky crown. She's got a book in her, I believe that's her left hand. And then at the bottom, these tiny figures that are reaching up to her that are only about a tenth of her size.
These are the figures that are kind of coming to her in supplication and this is one of my favorite projects that I did during quarantine.
How did Chancey recreate Haring’s Statue of Liberty on a 3D printer? She explains this in the next video.
Transcript: Process of using Simplfy3D to create Statue of Liberty picture
So, my process there was pretty simple. I used a program called Simplify 3D, which is a paid 3D printing slicing program. Thank you, Simplified3D for making the most accessible with screen readers that I've been able to find out there. And there is a built-in utility for color-to-height conversion.
So, all I did is brought in an image file, worked with the visual interpreter to make sure that I was making the right entry inferences about what should be positive and raised versus negative and lowered, and then I just cross my fingers, felt lucky, and three hours later I had a 3D picture that turned out to be legible.
NYPL has abolitionist coinage and the cast of e.e. cummings’s hand. Since patrons cannot touch these treasures, the staff found another way to make objects from the treasures non-visually accessible.
Visiting Chancey and the staff at the NYPL Andrew Heiskell Braille and Talking Book Library was one of the memorable moments of our trip to New York City. If you are in NYC, check out the library and sign up to receive emails about upcoming events.