Collaborative Creation Of Digital Tactile Graphics

The Tangram Workstation is a collaborative system for creating tactile graphics. A transcriber composing a tactile graphic from a visual source is supported by a non-visual reviewer on a two-dimensional tactile pin-matrix device on which he can observe and adapt the work of his sighted team member. We present the results of an evaluation with eight teams, each consisting of a transcriber and a blind reviewer. Overall, quality of tactile graphics can be improved by a collaborative approach. In most cases blind users recommended changes on tactile graphics even when they have been prepared by professional sighted editors. The study also showed that the blind reviewer is able to do simple editing tasks independently with our workstation.