admin

Over the course of the last three months, we have been present at four different exhibitions: CSUN, CTEBVI, ZieZo and SightCity. We want to send out our appreciation and thanks to all of you who that visited us there. Your reactions and new ideas always more than make up for the effort that goes into attending these exhibitions!

Eye catcher – TactileScope
At the exhibitions, we gave the visitors a first look at the TactileScope – an educational tool that is used to teach the concept of perspective in a tactile image. The device consists of three circles that can rotate freely over 360 degrees in order to position a central object in any particular orientation.
The TactileScope has the same bright yellow colour as TactiPad, and with its intriguing shape it attracted quite some attention, resulting in a lot of interesting conversations about the device and its application.

TactiPad drawing board, CircleFrame and GraphGrid
It always gives great satisfaction to see the smile on people’s faces when they discover the versatility and clever design aspects that characterize our range of products.
Some parents buy the TactiPad right away when they see their child creating circles and other shapes with an ease that they never experienced before. Others could not wait to start using it in their profession as a teacher or interpreter for the deafblind. And many blind visitors wished they would have had a TactiPad when they were young and still at school.
We love seeing our products come to life in the hands of our visitors!

Input and reactions from our visitors
The TactileView software also received great feedback from users. Ideas and feedback come from professional designers that create tactile graphics on a daily basis, from teachers, from interpreters for deafblind people, from parents of blind children, from technologists and scientists, etc. We have incorporated many of these in the upcoming release of the TactileView software (version 2.200).

User suggestion: manipulating smaller parts of the design
One of the many suggestions for new software features from the TactileView users was the application of filters on a selected area in the design.
For this, the ‘Select Area’ tool has been customized to include two variations: the rectangular area selection or vertical/horizontal strips.

Selected strips can be used to remove a vertical or horizontal area, or to add this amount of white space to the design. A preview when hovering over the green plus sign will display the addition, whereas hovering over the red minus sign shows the design with the deleted area. Simply clicking on either sign will confirm the action.

The rectangular area can be rotated or mirrored just with one mouse click. The selected content can now be processed using the filters (in previous releases they affected the entire design).

3D printers and braille matrices
3D print technology is a fast growing method of producing all sorts of objects for fun and education. Many libraries with large numbers of three-dimensional objects have been established, similar to the TactileView catalog with premade tactile images. Holding these printed objects in your hand is a great way to learn about a wide range of different concepts and subjects.
In books and web pages however, the same three-dimensional objects are presented in ‘flattened’, two-dimensional images and photos, giving a completely different impression. This is where tactile graphics made with TactileView come into play.

Printing in braille (or on swellpaper) and as 3D objects takes time. Moreover, a print cannot be changed once it has been printed. How nice would it be then, to have a large refreshable braille display that could cover an entire page!

Several companies are currently developing the technology for the pins, making them small enough to fit in a small space; fast enough so it would take not too long to present a new image; and importantly, cheap enough so we can all have access to such a device.
TactileView has so far been used to prepare images for printing on a braille embosser or on swellpaper, but in fact we have always been waiting for the day a matrix of braille pins would become available. Over the last few months we were approached by a number of people that are working on these technologies. They are more than interested to work with TactileView, as they see how the expertise in producing tactile graphics is ready to be used for this new type of dynamic matrix application. So… stay tuned for the next step in the innovation of tactile graphics!

For us, the last few months have seen a busy schedule of visiting conferences and exhibitions, bringing back a wealth of new ideas and contacts. Luckily, we were able to let all the new inspiration sink in during our summer holidays.

And what better way to prepare a vacation than with a series of useful tactile graphics! By making these images accessible as tactile graphics with TactileView, Jaap was able to have the same fun in anticipation of the trip as the rest of his family.

Map of the Mediterranean Sea between Italy and Spain

New tutorial: Editing challenging images

The production of these maps and images is a great example of how the new curved shape drawing tool in the upcoming version of TactileView will provide an effective tool for converting challenging images to tactile graphics. You can find the new tutorial in the online TactileView manual.

Additional images during the trip

Of course, numerous useful tactile images could be prepared for such a trip. For example: floor plans, menus and other images related to the cruise ship; street plans and images of the most interesting landmarks in the cities in which the ship will anchor, etc. Therefore we also brought the TactiPad drawing board with us during the trip, so my family members could show me in an instant what was relevant during each stage of the journey.

In just a few weeks’ time, a new version of the TactileView software will be released. In this version we have introduced a number of new features that were requested by our users.

To give you a glimpse of what is to come, we would like to highlight two of the new software features in two short videos. The first one is the ‘dot view’. In this view mode, your designs will be shown in braille dots on screen, just as the document will appear on paper. In other words, what you see is what you feel!

Another important addition is the combination with the Duxbury Braille Translator (DBT). Their new release 11.3 and the new TactileView version 2.200 will allow you to easily create a single document with both text AND graphics in braille!

If you are attending the ATIA conference, held January 27-31 in Orlando, Florida, please visit the Irie-AT booth (nr. 209) for a personal try-out.

You are also kindly invited for Jeff Gardner’s presentation of TactileView, on Friday January 30 from 2.20 pm until 3.20 pm.

Photo: Screenshot of TactileView design in dot view

Read moreTactileView – New version 2.200 coming soon!

As we already announced in our previous newsletter, the upcoming version of TactileView will introduce integration with the Duxbury Braille Translator (DBT). This powerful solution combines the best of both worlds: accurate braille texts with elegant tactile graphics.

We invite you to join the Beta test for DBT 11.3 Beta and TactileView (version 2.180 or higher). Visit the DBT beta page to register and find out all about inserting TactileView graphics on our beta page.

Visit us at the CTEBVI conference

The CTEBVI 2015 conference (California Transcribers and Educators of the Blind and Visually Impaired) will be held in San Francisco, CA from March 20 to March 22 at the San Francisco Airport Marriott. CTEBVI is an organization of parents, students, transcribers, educators and many other professionals that advocate the special needs of individuals living with blindness and visual impairment.

You can find us in the Irie-AT booth, or join our workshop on Saturday morning from 8:00-9:30.

Meet us at the ICEVI conference, held from July 2nd to Friday 7th in Bruges, Belgium.
Just outside the beautiful city centre, we will come together with over 200 experts from the fields of education and rehabilitation.

Tactile map of Bruges

The schedule leaves enough free time for an exploration of the city of Bruges. Whether you wish to visit the famous historic sites or simply enjoy a refreshing drink after an engaging conference day, a tactile map may come in very handy. We have prepared an A3 size tactile street map on the Index embosser that you can pick up at our table.

At the ICEVI, we will demonstrate numerous solutions for tactile graphics that are particularly suitable for education and rehabilitation: the TactileView software, the TactiPad drawing board, the prototype of the motorised drawing arm (MDA) and a prototype of a braille matrix device.
The next opportunity to see our range of Thinkable products is the Sight Village conference in Birmingham, July 18th and 19th.

We recently returned from the very inspiring Tactile Reading conference. Over 340 professionals came together in Stockholm to share their ideas about tactile reading and writing.

Now, freshly returned from Sweden, we are preparing to meet you at SightCity next week in Frankfurt. From 3 to 5 May you can find us in booth D1, right at the entrance of the main hall.

At the exhibition, we will demonstrate the second version of the motorised drawing arm (MDA) and the new math and science tools for the GraphGrid, which were both met with great enthusiasm in Stockholm. In the video link below, you can already get a view of the impressive speed with which the MDA can produce a TactileView design on the TactiPad drawing board.