Exploring tangible collaborative distance learning environments for the blind and visually impaired.

This work-in-progress presents our prototype of a tangible collaborative distance learning environment via a custom set of Trackable Interactive Multi-modal Manipulatives (TIMMs). This work defines a Tangible User Environment (TUE), empowering people with visual impairments to create, modify, and naturally interact with graphical representations that are commonly encountered in mathematics, computer science and other scientific disciplines. TIMMs are designed to enable distance collaboration among students and with instructors. This system supports remote and active position, proximity, stacking, and orientation tracking of manipulatives on a multi-touch table-top surface, while providing complete visibility to local and remote instructors. This user-centered system design is derived from various visits and discussions with instructors of blind and visually impaired students in K-12 education.