Seeing with sound and touch

Information graphics-diagrams, plans, maps, plots and charts-are widespread in written communication. The ability to comprehend, use and create these graphics is an important skill that most of us take for granted. However, for those of us who are blind or have severe vision impairment access to such graphics is severely limited, restricting effective participation in the workplace, limiting educational opportunities, especially in art and design, mathematics, and science and technology, and constraining enjoyment of popular media including the web. Lack of access to maps and plans of public spaces and buildings also contributes to one of the most disabling consequences of being blind: the difficulty of leaving the safety of home and having to find one's way in a new environment. Tactile graphics are currently the best way of providing access to graphical material for those who are blind. However they are usually produced manually by skilled transcribers and so are time consuming and expensive to create. For this reason technologies that provide effective, low-cost, on-demand accessible graphics have been a “holy grail” of accessibility research for several decades. Fortunately, new technologies developed for mobile devices, gaming and graphics recognition now make this goal achievable. In this talk I will describe the GraVVITAS project (http://gravvitas.infotech.monash.edu/). We are developing new computer technologies that are designed to work on touch screens and to provide people who are blind or have severe vision impairment with fast, inexpensive access to a wide variety of information graphics at home, at school and at work. (joint work with Cagatay Goncu).