Pictures and diagrams play an important role in representing information and conveying ideas and emotions that cannot be explained clearly in words, particularly in subjects of school education such as mathematics, geography, and art. In Taiwan, special education teachers use Braille textbooks to teach blind students. The textbooks contain tactile outline versions of pictures and diagrams. For certain key lines, curves and shapes of these pictures special hand-bonded wires are added, making it suitable for blind students to learn by touch. However, the diversity of these tactile pictures is limited. Teachers who want to supplement the graphics must remove details of the graphics by hand into a simple outline version, and then use a Braille graphic printer to output it. This is quite time-consuming and labor-intensive. Moreover, color information is usually ignored in these tactile outline graphics. In this study, we conducted psychophysical experiments to determine boundaries of the 13 basic color terms. The experimental results were modeled and then used to design a computer app. This application features automatic outline drawing and simplifying the various colors of original pictures into 13 basic colors and convert them into corresponding black and white patterns. The converted black and white pictures can be printed using thermal printers or a Braille graphic printers. This application was tested and evaluated by 8 special education teachers and reported “acceptable” according to the survey using the System Usability Scale (SUS). The teachers also gave advice to improve the computer app.

Authors:
Shuo Ting Wei, China University of Technology, Taiwan

About the Presenter(s)
Dr Shuo Ting WEI is a University Assistant Professor/Lecturer at China University of Technology in Taiwan

See this presentation on the full schedule – Monday Schedule

Bookmark