Presented at 9:00 am in Colorado I-J on Thursday, November 20, 2025.
#41161Speaker(s)
- John Gardner, Prof., ViewPlus
Session Details
- Length of Session: 1-hr
- Format: Lecture
- Expertise Level: Intermediate
- Type of session: General Conference
Summary
I will demonstrate several straightforward ways that anybody can create graphs and print them on a ViewPlus embosser. Apps will include at least the Desmos on-line graphing calculator, the ViewPlus Audio Graphing Calculator, and MS Excel. Each of these has advantages. The user can create plots having one or more x-y graphs with each of them, and some can create polar and other special graphs as well. You can even create graphs of inequalities that use shading to distinguish different regions.
Abstract
Introduction This presentation is intended to demonstrate how straightforward it is to use any of three graphing applications to create tactile graphs. I will create several kinds of graph with the Desmos on-line graphing calculator, the ViewPlus Audio Graphing Calculator, and Microsoft Excel.
Desmos Graphing Calculator The Desmos graphing calculator is a free on-line application (https://desmos.com) that permits the user to create and print graphs from equations written in several popular math languages including Nemeth and UBC braille. For a number of years they have provided a “share” facility with Instructions to obtain a PNG or SVG file that prints more or less well on ViewPlus and other embossers. I will demo better ways to use this application to get really good tactile graphs.
ViewPlus Audio Graphing Calculator This application provides excellent audio tone access to x-y graphs and also provides a print interface permitting them to be printed on ViewPlus embossers. Equations are written in ASCII math form. I will briefly demo the audio tone graphing capability (which Desmos also has but with fewer features), but my main purpose is to demo the tactile graphing procedure.
MS Excel Excel is a well-known spreadsheet application that permits users to illustrate spreadsheet data in the form of charts or graphs. The ViewPlus Tiger Software Suite includes a braille translator for the spreadsheet and also for charts and graphs created from spreadsheet data. Most popular chart and graph formats are available with Excel, so users can create and print excellent tactile charts and graphs. The advantage of Excel over the other two is the ease of including braille labels.
Keypoints
- All students and professionals in STEM fields need access to graphs and charts.
- Most blind STEM students and professionals need the capability of creating tactile charts and graphs.
- Several accessible applications can create charts or graphs, and ViewPlus printers will make tactile copies.
Disability Areas
Vision
Topic Areas
Alternate Format, Assistive Technology, Uncategorized
Speaker Bio(s)
John Gardner
John Gardner received a PhD in physics from the University of Illinois. He has been a faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania and Oregon State University. He has also held visiting positions at the Technical University of Munich, University of Warwick, Imperial College, Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research, University of Stuttgart, and the University of Konstanz. Oregon State was his home for 30 years as an active faculty member and where he has been Professor Emeritus since 2003. He is known as an expert on point defects in solids and several fields of experimental solid state physics. He lost his sight unexpectedly in 1988 and became interested in accessibility of complex information, including math and graphics. In 1996 he founded ViewPlus Technologies, which has grown into a multi-million dollar company producing information-access hardware and software. ViewPlus is the leading manufacturer of tactile graphics and braille embossers in the world. He has received numerous awards and has given invited presentations on both physics and information accessibility at universities and conferences on five continents.