#tactile reader

This is Tactile Reader booklist page. We have various ranges of story books and comics for the blind children to read. We using the protagonist from each stories for children to recognize different stories. We also have braille and voice to guide them.

As a member of Tactile Reader group, I contribute to the following points:

1.  Organzing group works

2. Shot the videos (especially the environment part and the little gril’s part)

3.  Help record the group progress

4. Research for the proplem area (especially the articles for blind children’s vision need) 

5. I design the Tactile Reader icon and the loading page

6. I make the the interactive part on the picture through FLASH 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8waABnVe21M

7. I did some background researchs to answer these questions:

Do the visual impaired children need to read picture books?

How do they read? (Blind can visualize images by touch sensation)

What are the supporting technologies? (tactile screen)

8. I design the video prototype

9. I edit the video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctzAEKwR39U

10. I participate on designing the booklist page

These are the main works I contribute. I am very happy that I can work on this project with my lovely group members. As a creative practitioner in interactive design area, I really concer about designing the apps which can really help people. I really interest in changing impossibility to possibility. Therefore, the Tactile Reader exist. Designing for the people who seeks help really encourage me. Although I don’t come from interactive design background, I’ve tried my best to design the app. I see my big improvement this semester. I’ve learned a lot from Debra in the class. I feel very lucky to study from her.

Tactile Reader is a development based on Tactile painter, because it is more perfect. We did more researches, especially on the blind children psychology and behavior part. We consider children’s activity, interests, behavior and guiding approaches. We even consider children’s patience and the way to catch their attentions while they are using this app.  This is an achievement of Tactile Reader. This is because we not only design the interfaces, we also think the users feeling and experience in depth.

While doing this project, I also did several achivement myself. My first making icon, first designing the interfaces, first designing as an UI/UX designer and first working in a group as a leader.

This is the prototype for tactile reader introducing video.

These scenes tell the story of blind children’s visual world. The only pattern and image they get from outside world is based on these dull dots.

Although they are able to hear the voices from outside world, it is still not enough.

Their lives are just like yours and mine, but without images. Although other people tell them how’s everything looks like, they still don’t get it.

In addition, it is also impossible for them to experience the digital world. They seek equal opportunities to read, to watch the pictures, comics and animations like the other child. They want to know more about this world.

There is one way for them to watch these images-- by touch. Blinds are able to visualize the images in their brains by touch the tactile images.

That’s why Tactile Reader exist. Tactile Reader is a smart, electronic tool, which offers visual experiences to blind children by electronic tactile screen. It also has voice guide and voice interaction to help these children engage in the 2D world. It has various ranges of images such as cartoon, story book, comics and animate story, for blind children to read.

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctzAEKwR39U)

The population of visually impaired people is counted by World Health Organization (WHO). There are 285 million people are estimated to be visually impaired worldwide: 39 million are blind and 246 million have low vision. 

This pie chat shows that there are nearly 41% people have visual problem worldwide. Most of them have issues with vision life such as reading, watching TV, surfing online or even enjoying the images. These people have less or non experience of the visual world like the others. They have less fun and less happiness than the others due to their vision problem, especially the blind children. They cannot or hard to read the picture book and watch cartoon which brings a lot fun to our childhood. The image is a way we understand the world better and communicate with others. And moreover, image is a way we express ourselves and creating things. However, the blind children have lack experiences in their lives.

In fact, the market of tactile image is large. A British lady called Jackie argues that why there are not many tactile picture books for the blind children who are seeking to read. They are not different to the other children. They are also interest on picture stories, comics, animations an so on.

‘My daughter is not unique in loving books, she is not unique in desperately seeking information from the books with her ‘eyes’, i.e. her fingers. I have spent the last four and a half years teaching her to do just that. The mistake I made was to completely misjudge the availability of tactile picture books.“ 

‘I have no formal training with blind children but it seems to me that natural progression from tactile nursery board books to tactile picture books is something that should be encouraged in order to maintain tactual interest in books among blind children, before and after they can read braille.’

                                                                                                    --Jackie Norman

Norman, J. (2003). Tactile picture books: Their importance for young blind   children. British Journal of Visual Impairment, 21(3), 111-114. doi:10.1177/026461960302100305

Unsurprisingly, there are several pioneer attempts in this area. 

‘Touch the Prado’ exhibition is one example.

I have read more researches about 3D printed technique benefiting the blind, in partucular the blind children.  One article argues that:

‘Young children with visual impairments greatly from tactile graphics (illustrations, images,  puzzles,  objects)  during theirlearning  processes.’

‘During  thisformative  research  we  noted  that parents  feel  like there  is  a  limited  selection  of  tactile  picture  books,  either  due  to availability   at   their   child’s   school   or   library,   that   they   are expensive,  or  because  of  their  child’s  unique  needs.’

                                                                                                 --------------

Stangl, A., Kim, J., & Yeh, T. (2014). 3D printed tactile picture books for children with visual impairments: A design probe. Paper presented at the 321-324. doi:10.1145/2593968.2610482

“Living paintings“ is another project of making tactile picture books for blind children.

29/04/2015

This day we deliver works to each group members. Allen works on the voice guide part. He would do more researches on children audio picture books. He would think about how to guide these children effectively by the voice. Jen works on the interactive part. She would find a solution for the blind children to interact with the images and gain more happiness and confident. Cindy works on the database area. She would research the materials that the children are most interest in for the reading database. I will work on the early video part. I would think about the scenes and further work delivery.

04/05/2015

Today we discussed the researches each member fround. We had deeper understanding of our project areas. And some of the possible solutions of our challeges. We than desided the following works in terms of video recording. (I am taking the photos:).)

05/05/2015

We go out to record some scenes of the video.  (JEN is taking the photos;).)

19/05/2015

Overview:

Tactile Reader is a tool especially for 5-10 years old blind children to read picture stories by their touch sensation on the screen and also provide interactions with those images from stories.This is a development of Tactile Painter(information about Tactile Painter http://dxiriswang.tumblr.com/).  Tactile Reader offers visual experience by using different textures to decribe various visual objects. In this case, blind children are able to understand and memorize the shape of the objects in 2 Dimension form. This benefit them on well understanding visual information and even drawing. Moreover, they are also able to do some further interaction with the images from these tactile picture stories. This step is not only able to enhance their experience but also help them better understanding the visual information. More interestingly, it also helps them understand how the other people paint and offers them a way to draw simple parttens simply by their fingers in the future.

Why we change the original idea:

The reasons why we changed are:

1. There are too many funtions of this tool. This is because there were three main sections which are reading, tutorial and painting before. We wonder that might be too complex and hard for a child to use, in particular the blind child. Therefore, we sepreate the reading part and a little bit tutorial part to a single application. This is why the TACTILE READER exsit.

By the way, for the further development, the painting part would be built as a single app for older blind people group to use but not only especially for the sight-impaired children.

2. The other reason we move the painting part away is because this is too conplex for a 5-10 yearse old sight-impaired child to complete a painting independently. If they fail and feel hard on drawing, this will affect their confidence. This is not what we aim to give them through this application. We hope they can learn more abouth the outside world. And through this process, they are able to feel happy and becoming more confident. We aim to make a friendly tool for these people. Therefore, we move the painting part and most of the tutorial part away. We keep the reading section and some further inteactive drawing games. This can be seen as a learning process for these children. We hope they can learn more from it and actually feel happy and interested while they are using TACTILE READER.

The challenges for us:

1. What are the potential audiences? (IRIS’s work)

2. Do the visual impaired children need to read picture books? (IRIS’s work)

3. What kinds of picture story books are they interest? The database of Tactile Reader (Cindy’s work)

4. How do they read? (IRIS’s work)

5. What are the supporting technologies? (IRIS’s work)

6. How to make the app friendly and safety for blind children to use? How to make them feel confidence through using Tactile Reader? (Jen’s work)

7. What kinds of apps are easier for blind children to use? More focus on the interface part. How to develop the app from Tactile Painter? (Jen’s work, Groups will help if need)

8. How the interactive part contribute for the blind children better understanding shape? (Jen gots some ideas)

9. What types of audio the children like? How the Children’s audiobook works? (Allen’s work)