Generating Audio-Tactile and Web-Accessible SVG Graphics

Presented at 8:00am in Standley II Lab on Thursday, November 17, 2016.

Speaker(s)

• Volker Sorge, Dr, Progressive Accessibility Sol.
• John Gardner, Prof, ViewPlus Technologies, Inc.

Session Details

• Length of Session: 2-hr
• Format:
• Expertise Level: Not provided
• Type of session: General Conference

Summary

We instruct on fully automatically creating accessible SVG diagrams for chemistry with rich descriptions. We demonstrate how the diagrams can be embossed for audio-tactile reading or alternatively embedded into web content to be interactively explored in a browser with synchronized speech, highlighting and magnification.

Abstract

Diagrams are an important means of conveying information in STEM subjects and are ubiquitous in teaching material. Since they need to be understood in fine detail, their precise description is often very difficult and time consuming.

We present a plugin for the IVEO Creator software that allows the automatic generation of accessible chemical diagrams. It generates fully described diagrams in SVG format either from bitmap images or from unique chemical identifiers, requiring only minimal human intervention. The resulting images can be embossed for audio-tactile reading or embedded into web content to be interactively explored using the DIAGcess web front end.

In our session participants will get hands-on experience on * working with the IVEO software to generate audio-tactile diagrams * employing the DIAGcess web explorer to interact with diagrams in web content.

While the software currently focuses on chemical diagrams, it will be extended to other STEM subjects in the future.

Keypoints

1. Generation of audio-tactile accessible chemical diagrams
2. Creation of web content with universally accessible, interactive SVG diagrams
3. Latest features of the IVEO software suite

Disability Areas

Cognitive/Learning, Vision

Topic Areas

Alternate Format, Assistive Technology, Web/Media/App Access

Speaker Bio(s)

Volker Sorge

Volker is Professor in Document Analysis and Accessibility at the University of Birmingham, UK and Adjunct Faculty at IIT Delhi, India. He is working primarily on diagram recognition, mathematical document analysis and handwriting recognition. Practical applications of his research include STEM accessibility with a particular focus on Web technologies and eBooks. He has been working as a Visiting Scientist with Google on math integration into ChromeVox. He is a member of the MathJax consortium responsible for the integration of accessible rendering of mathematical formulas on the web. And with his company Progressive Accessibility Solutions, he concentrates on accessibility technology that exploits image analysis to generate accessible STEM diagrams.

John Gardner

John is Professor Emeritus of Physics at Oregon State University, and the founder and president of ViewPlus Technologies, Inc., a major access technology company with worldwide sales of millions of dollars per year. John has presented hundreds of seminars, colloquia, and workshops; he has given contributed and invited conference talks on physics and on information access by people with disabilities throughout the U.S., Europe, and Asia. He is considered a leading expert on access to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) information.