Computer graphics for the blind

Abstract

This paper presents a tactile hard-copy system which help an "active tactile graphics" for the blind. Here the word "active" means that the blind can make graphics programs and deal with computer graphics by his own efforts. It translates the color graphics on the screen into an embossed dots image on paper. To get a precise embossed dots hard-copy close to the real graphics screen, we adopted a Braille printer plotter. The program stays resident in computer's memory, and a push of COPY key at any time starts to make an embossed hard-copy of the current graphic screen. By this system and computer language like C, the blind can try to make graphics programs and examine the colors and the graphic figures constructing the screen graphics. The system can extract several combinations of colors from the whole graphics selectively and make the hard-copys. This color selective hard-copys help the blind understand the whole graphics as a result, because each hard-copy reduces the complexity of the graphics and tends to be easier to examine by touch.