Stories

A math teacher came to us with the question: ‘Can you create a 30/60/90 degree version of a triangle tool for the TactiPad?’ He wanted his students to draw 3D shapes such as cubes, prisms and pyramids. Being keen to improve and extend Thinkable product range we took up this challenge. After describing the details of the tool, we present some of the decisions we made during the design process. You will also find information …

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In late summer 2021, Thinkable CEO Jaap Breider was visited by journalist Eskandar Abadi and filmmaker Shahab Kermani. They produced a video for Deutsche Welle TV (Persian department). Jaap was accompanied and interviewed during a full day in his house and company headquarters in Huissen (The Netherlands). Besides receiving his guests, talking about himself and Thinkable, Jaap explains the basics of tactile graphics to the interviewer. Being a blind man himself, the interviewer is clearly …

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As blind students, drawing and the visual aspects of math and science are often dismissed as a waste of time or impossible. This completely disregards those students, like myself who happen to be visual learners. My brain thrives on pictures, in spite of the years of teachers and professors trying to cram me into the memorizer box that is assigned to blind learners. Once I got away from so-called blindness experts/educators, I entered the real …

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I was looking forward to finding out what progress had been made on the motoried drawing arm since I saw the prototype at Sight village last year. I heard that it could draw out pictures so I planned a test for it. First I downloaded a copy of my school logo (png file) onto my phone before Sight Village (2019). When I got to Sight Village I went to find the motorised drawing arm and …

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