Archived Newsletter

Recently, we were contacted by Emily Schlenker, a blind pre-medical student at Wichita State University. She was born without sight, but that hasn’t slowed down her fascination with organic chemistry. For us at Thinkable, it’s stories like hers that drive our passion for tactile graphics. We are excited to share it with you as end-of-year inspiration.

Blind ‘visual learner’

Emily says: “The TactiPad has been instrumental in my transformation from a fearful and anxious student who lacked the confidence to speak up in class or go to my professor in private with my questions, into a strong participant in lectures and study sessions who is often right on the money with the answers.”

Another intriguing aspect of her story is that she describes herself as being a visual learner, regardless of her visual impairment. “My brain thrives on pictures,” she says, “my mental acuity and ability to do organic chemistry in my head from memory has improved exponentially. If I can draw, I can remember.”

Aid for assignments and exams

Despite the initially steep learning curve, she has rapidly become very skilful in making tactile drawings that enable her to get the most out of her participation in the academic world. “After working with the TactiPad, I am now confident enough to present my pictures as visual aids for my questions or as parts of assignments. Hearts and happy faces are alright, but this thing is life altering. Without it, I would not be preparing to take the MCAT exam next summer.”

For us, it certainly was heart-warming to read Emily’s personal story. If you too have experience with the Thinkable products that you wish to share with other (future) users, do not hesitate to contact us!

We wish you a wonderful holiday season from us at Thinkable and all the best in 2018!

In recent months, we have made major progress again in the development of the Motorised Drawing Arm (MDA). In this newsletter, we are excited to share the latest developments. We also invite you to come and see the device in action at the TifloInnova exhibition on 17-19 November in Madrid (for further details, see below).

MDA prototype 2

The first important improvement in the second MDA prototype is the use of a new type of motor that applies pressure to the pen. The new setup will ensure that the pen can move over the height of the 8 TactiPad buttons irrespective of their positions. Also, the new motor better accommodates the slight variations in height across the TactiPad. This results in a consistent quality of the tactile lines across the entire drawing surface.

In the following video, you can see the remarkable speed and precision of the new prototype is if you selected an image from the catalog and pressed the sketch button:

USB connection and WIFI access

Besides connecting the MDA via USB directly to the computer, it can now also be connected wirelessly via Wifi because of the addition of a Raspberry Pi to the system. This way, it can even be operated using your mobile phone or any other mobile device! This offers brand new ways for students and teachers to work with educational graphics.

MDA catalog

Currently, the TactileView software includes a catalog with thousands of ready-to-use tactile graphics. We plan to set up a similar catalog of images specifically for sketching on the MDA.
You can already visit our demo version of the MDA catalog, which includes a first set of designs as an example. In the future, you can directly drive your MDA from this online catalog from any browser on your pc, mobile phone or tablet.

Your suggestions

We are very interested to hear which content you would like to produce when you would have an MDA on your desk. When visiting the MDA catalog page, we welcome you to think about which categories or which specific pre-made graphics you would like to find in the catalog. Or even better, send us your ideas or images that you would like to see produced on the MDA!

TifloInnova exhibition in Madrid

Jaap and Niels from Thinkable will be present at the TifloInnova exhibition, giving a hands-on demonstration of the TactiPad drawing board, TactileView software and of course the new MDA prototype.

The exhibition is held from 17-19 November in the ONCE Sports and Cultural Centre in the north of Madrid. Admission is free for all visitors. When you are there, we invite you to pay us a visit in booth 4. For further details, see the TifloInnova website.

In recent months, we have made major progress again in the development of the Motorised Drawing Arm (MDA). In this newsletter, we are excited to share the latest developments. We also invite you to come and see the device in action at the TifloInnova exhibition on 17-19 November in Madrid (for further details, see below).

MDA prototype 2

The first important improvement in the second MDA prototype is the use of a new type of motor that applies pressure to the pen. The new setup will ensure that the pen can move over the height of the 8 TactiPad buttons irrespective of their positions. Also, the new motor better accommodates the slight variations in height across the TactiPad. This results in a consistent quality of the tactile lines across the entire drawing surface.

In the following video, you can see the remarkable speed and precision of the new prototype is if you selected an image from the catalog and pressed the sketch button:

USB connection and WIFI access

Besides connecting the MDA via USB directly to the computer, it can now also be connected wirelessly via Wifi because of the addition of a Raspberry Pi to the system. This way, it can even be operated using your mobile phone or any other mobile device! This offers brand new ways for students and teachers to work with educational graphics.

MDA catalog

Currently, the TactileView software includes a catalog with thousands of ready-to-use tactile graphics. We plan to set up a similar catalog of images specifically for sketching on the MDA.
You can already visit our demo version of the MDA catalog, which includes a first set of designs as an example. In the future, you can directly drive your MDA from this online catalog from any browser on your pc, mobile phone or tablet.

Your suggestions

We are very interested to hear which content you would like to produce when you would have an MDA on your desk. When visiting the MDA catalog page, we welcome you to think about which categories or which specific pre-made graphics you would like to find in the catalog. Or even better, send us your ideas or images that you would like to see produced on the MDA!

TifloInnova exhibition in Madrid

Jaap and Niels from Thinkable will be present at the TifloInnova exhibition, giving a hands-on demonstration of the TactiPad drawing board, TactileView software and of course the new MDA prototype.

The exhibition is held from 17-19 November in the ONCE Sports and Cultural Centre in the north of Madrid. Admission is free for all visitors. When you are there, we invite you to pay us a visit in booth 4. For further details, see the TifloInnova website.

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.

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.

In this newsletter, we would like to announce that Thinkable will shortly release a new version of TactileView, the most powerful tactile graphics editor available on the market. In this version, the emphasis lays on new convenient tools that will help you with accurate alignment of texts and objects in your design. With these, getting the right page layout has never been easier.

Introducing the braille grid and measurements grid

In the upcoming version of the TactileView software, the new braille grid and revised measurements grid will be introduced. These are great tools that help you to manage the layout of your design by easily aligning and placing text labels and graphic elements.

The braille grid is primarily used to align text labels in a regular grid and conform to certain layout guidelines, whereas the measurements grid is mostly used to align objects and visualize their size.

Using these grids, you can easily:

• Manage the size of inserted objects (measurements grid)
• Control distances between elements (measurements grid)
• Place text labels in a regular grid or on the same row/column (braille grid)
• Align objects with text labels (subsequently using both alignment grids)

Hands-on demonstration at the ATIA
Held on February 3-6 in Orlando, Florida, the ATIA conference is one of the largest international conferences on assistive technology. To get a hands-on demonstration of the TactiPad drawing board and TactileView software, including the new features in the upcoming release version, visit Irie-AT in booth 804 at the ATIA.

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!