Automated Tactile Graphics Translation: In the Field
By Jayant, Chandrika; Renzelmann, Matt; Wen, Dana; Krisnandi, Satria; Ladner, Richard; Comden, Dan; ASSETS 2007 - The Ninth International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility, pp. 75-83Publication Date: October 15-17, 2007
Review of the Tactile Graphics Assistant (TGA), software automating the process of translating figures from mathematics, science and engineering textbooks into Braille. The components of the TGA that identify text and replace it with Braille use machine learning, computational geometry, and optimization algorithms. This is a follow-up of a 2005 paper detailing the development of the software which had yet to be tested in the field. Since then, over 2,300 figures have been translated from 4 books, demonstrating that figures can be translated in 10 minutes or less of human time on average. The overall Tactile Graphics workflow has been refined. New features added to the TGA include automated label placement, and text recognition using machine learning techniques. Workflow and training manuals have been developed which include information on software and hardware requirements for using the system. A one-day training session on the TGA and workflow with around 60 participants was held at the 2007 National Braille Association Spring Professional Development Conference.
Published by: Association for Computing Machinery (Website:http://www.acm.org)
SIGACCESS (ACM Special Interest Group on Accessible Computing) (Web Site: http://www.sigaccess.org )
