[Art_beyond_sight_learning_tools] accessible rode, cartoonist, money

[Lisa Yayla]

Hi,
Sending a list of links to articles and the text to the
articles (following list of links)with such varied subject
matter as roedos (audio description), a cartoonist, to
accessible money. Also in the last issue National Geographic
March 2005 an article entitled What's in Your Mind s section
about Alvaro Pascual-Leones work at Harvard.

Regards,
Lisa

List of links

Sights of rodeo detailed for sightless
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/3059101

BLIND PHOTOGRAPHER IS A MAN OF VISION
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/02/27/PKG5QBEBB01.DTL
link to gallery
http://www.varnishfineart.com./

In the eye of the beholder
Berkeley Art Museum and the Townsend Center take a closer
look at art and visual impairment in 'Blind at the Museum'
exhibit 
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/2005/03/02_blind.shtml

Cartoonist’s ‘little guy’ fights system with humor 
http://www.dmtimes.net/blog/News/_archives/2005/3/3/392127.html

BlindArt links
Will Bennett profiles a bronze by sculptor Brian Taylor
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2005/02/28/baobj28.xml&sSheet=/arts/2005/02/28/ixartleft.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4304571.stm


Wheatley Lectures on Blindness in Medieval France and
England at Ohio State
Taken From Research for His Book Stumbling Blocks Before the
Blind: Medieval Constructions of a Disability 
http://www.hamilton.edu//news/more_news/display.cfm?ID=9185

New Software May Offer a Rainbow of Sound
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_title=New-Software-May-Offer-a-Rainbow-of-Sound&story_id=30455#story-start

New systems enhance plays
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05063/466155.stm

Visitors will soon get feel of Manhattan Beach park 
Twelve Braille markers will help the blind navigate a trail
in the city's Polliwog Park. 
http://www.dailybreeze.com/news/articles/1328227.html

Feeling short-changed
http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=92194
link to interview with TIC mp3 file
http://www.ourmoneytoo.org/tic-interview.mp3 
link to organisation 
http://www.ourmoneytoo.org 


Differently able
http://www.trinidadexpress.com/index.pl/article_features?id=64244833

Regeneration of Lowestoft slammed 
http://new.edp24.co.uk/content/news/story.aspx?brand=EDPOnline&category=News&tBrand=edponline&tCategory=news&itemid=NOED01%20Mar%202005%2021%3A46%3A58%3A640

Blind photographer develops novel vision
http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/journalgazette/living/11012802.htm 
repeat???



BLIND PHOTOGRAPHER IS A MAN OF VISION
It wasn't until after Pete Eckert went blind that he really
started to see things. 

"I can see lots of ... really weird things," Eckert says,
slowly lifting his left hand toward his face and gazing
directly at it. "I feel light so strongly that it allows me
to see the bones in my skeleton as pulsating energy, or like
in an X-ray. At times I can sort of see sound. Sometimes I
can even see things from the back of my head." 

With eyes in the back of his head, you'd figure Eckert might
make a good schoolteacher. But that would be too easy. 

Wearing jeans, a leather jacket and aviator sunglasses and
standing more confidently than Uzu, his giant Bavarian
shepherd guide dog, Eckert, 48, gives the impression that he
likes a challenge. So after the former carpenter went blind
from retinitis pigmentosa six years ago, he did the first
thing he wasn't supposed to be able to do. 

He became a photographer. 

"The idea of a blind guy taking photos just cracked me up,"
Eckert says as he and Uzu visit Eckert's art photography
exhibition at Varnish Fine Art studio on Natoma Street in
San Francisco. The exhibition runs through Saturday and he's
preparing for another in April at the Badé Museum in
Berkeley next month. 

About five years ago, when Eckert was still coming to terms
with his loss of sight, he was cleaning out a drawer at his
Sacramento home and found a camera with infrared settings.
He thought about how invisible wavelengths might influence a
blind person trying to use the camera. A lightbulb came on
in his head, and it made him smile. 

"I'd have my wife and my friends take me out in the middle
of the night so I could shoot photographs," Eckert says. "Of
course, they thought I was crazy, which was fine by me." 

It wasn't the first time someone took Eckert for a nut. 

Eckert was 28 when he was deemed legally blind, meaning
that, from 20 feet, he could see less than what a person
with perfect vision could see from 400 feet. 

"At first, I freaked out," Eckert says. "I had two immediate
fears: that I wouldn't be able to take care of myself and
that I wouldn't make any money." 

Eckert spent the next decade earning several degrees,
including one each in sculpture and ceramics at the Art
Institute of Boston and one in design and industry from San
Francisco State. He also became a black belt in tae kwon do. 

He was so good in the self-defense arts that he started to
teach a class. When some of his students didn't believe that
he could fight at full speed, Eckert picked a few of the
more experienced troublemakers in the class and scheduled a
day to spar. To prepare for the match, Eckert memorized the
room. He took mental notes of how sounds bounced off each
corner and where light and warmth entered into his blind
picture. He kicked the students' butts. 

"If I can learn this much about one room," Eckert says he
thought, "why not do the same in the rest of the world?" 

Eckert implemented that idea directly into his photography.
With his brain rewired in a way that light allows him to see
the skeletal structure of parts of his body, Eckert says, he
paints with light and navigates through touch while
listening to sounds. 

"Imagination fills in the details," he says. 

After completing a photo shoot, Eckert develops contact
sheets, has friends give verbal feedback and then memorizes
each print before choosing the final slide. Sometimes he
draws on the film to add effects. He credits Time- Life
Books on camera techniques and some very friendly and very
patient experts at his local camera store for helping him
fine-tune his craft. 

He often returns to places that he frequented when he was
younger and could still see well. 

"Saloon" was shot at the old Saloon on Grant Avenue in North
Beach, once a favorite hangout. Relying on his hazy memories
of past drinking days, Eckert entered the Saloon, scoped out
a spot in the back and waited for tourists to fill up the
bar and create sounds of the room. He then snapped the
pictures in about the same time it took to drink a
Manhattan. 

Blind photography is not a gimmick to Eckert. 

"My pictures make you question the limits blind people
face," Eckert says as gallery visitors admire the work
without realizing that the blind man standing nearby is the
artist. "Look. I'm competing with sighted artists." 

So what's next? Driving a car? 

"No way. I only ride motorcycles," he says seriously. "But
just in my backyard." 



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PETE ECKERT is part of the hoto” exhibition showing through
April 5 at Varnish Fine Art, 77 Natoma St., San Francisco.
(415) 222-6131. 

www.varnishfineart.com. 




Sights of rodeo detailed for sightless
Annual parade comes to life from vivid descriptions
By TODD ACKERMAN
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle

Jacob Garza liked the horses, the country singers and the
floats, but his favorite part of the 2005 rodeo parade was
the cheerleaders. He wondered if any were available.
 
Not surprising, perhaps, for a 23-year-old guy — except that
Garza can scarcely see.

Among the estimated 75,000 people in attendance were at
least 12 blind — or visually impaired — people. They took in
the two-hour parade via an audio description by Houston
Taping for the Blind, a volunteer organization whose mission
is to "turn sight into sound."

"It sure beats straining my eyes and rolling them around
like crazy," said Garza, who can read with a magnifying
glass but has trouble seeing things at any distance. "We use
our other senses better than sighted people, but the audio
adds another dimension."

Despite the morning's cold, steady drizzle, Garza muttered,
"I am so not ready to leave" when other family members
started to stir late in the parade.

The audio description, what Taping for the Blind refers to
as the art of talking pictorially, continued until the very
end, a nonstop play-by-play of the floats, covered wagons,
marching bands, horseback-mounted riding groups and clowns.
What stood out was the detail — the height of the miniature
horses, the color of the cowboys' chaps and vests, the shape
of an antique bus.

"The thing to remember is that 80 to 90 percent of blind
people had vision at one time," said Trice Lawrence, one of
two Taping for the Blind volunteers who provided the
description. "You close your eyes and try to visualize what
they'd want to know."

Taping for the Blind, which also provides descriptions of
rodeo performances, museum exhibits, IMAX movies and plays,
has been helping blind people visualize the parade for 10
years now. Lawrence was doing only his second, but colleague
Ted Pfister, a Taping for the Blind volunteer since 1980,
has done all 10.

He says the descriptions have not only served the visually
impaired community — "by lending them our eyes, we allow
them to see" — they've changed his way of looking at the
world. He can't go to a baseball game or look at a tree
without thinking how to describe it.

Saturday's audio description was also streamed live over the
Internet for anyone who wanted to listen. Where one listens
to a description of an event that cannot be seen may not
seem to matter, but Adair Smith does not agree.

"I like being here with friends, enjoying the bands, taking
it all in," said Smith, removing his headset to answer a
question. "These audio descriptions give you a better idea
of what's going on."

Asked if the idea of a visually impaired person "watching" a
parade was something of an incongruity, Garza replied,
"Anybody can enjoy a parade — blind, deaf, paralyzed. You
just have to use your senses."




  
Object of the week: Burano Horse
(Filed: 28/02/2005)

Will Bennett profiles a bronze by sculptor Brian Taylor

Burano horses were a breed used by the Ancient Greeks and
Etruscans in wartime to pull carts laden with battlefield
and siege machinery. Their strength and enormous lung
capacity enabled them to drag massive loads at speed over
great distances without rest.

 
Brian Taylor's Burano Horse 

On Wednesday Brian Taylor's 5ft-high bronze sculpture Burano
Horse will go on sale for £6,500 at an exhibition in London
that will mark the foundation of the world's first permanent
collection of art that can be appreciated by blind and
visually impaired people. Taylor, a former art college
lecturer who regularly exhibits at sculpture parks, has
captured the raw muscular power of the Burano horse, with
its head pressed into the neck, its mane arched and its tail
raised to create a feeling of tension and momentum.

This strength can be appreciated by art lovers who suffer
from restricted vision because, like all 62 works at the
exhibition called Sense and Sensuality at the Royal College
of Art on Kensington Gore, it can be touched. The show
continues until next Monday. 

The exhibition has been organised by Blind Art, a
British-based charity which aims to encourage visually
impaired people to get involved in the art world, which,
inevitably, is normally the domain of the sighted.

"This exhibition represents my desire, as a severely
visually impaired person, to confront with passion my visual
deprivation," says the organisation's founder, Sheri
Khayami. "The works that we have selected are designed to
convey the aesthetic beauty of multi-sensory art.

"Blind Art's aim is that all those attending our exhibition
will experience perceptual crossovers of touch, taste,
smell, sound and sight."

All the works are for sale, at prices ranging from a few
hundred pounds to £45,000, with 40 per cent going to Blind
Art. The charity will award a £5,000 prize to one artist and
will buy one work of art from the exhibition as the first
piece in its collection, which will be housed in the UK and
will eventually travel the world.

 
 Artworks designed to appeal to blind and partially sighted
people are to go on show in London. 

Sense and Sensuality is an exhibition of works by the
finalists from the UK's first annual competition to create
pieces that can be appreciated by visually impaired people. 

The event is funded by the charity BlindArt and features
several works by visually impaired artists. 

They can be viewed at the Royal College of Art from 2-7
March in central London. 

All of the works are for sale, and some of the proceeds will
be used to create a permanent collection. 

BlindArt was founded by Iranian-born Sheri Khayami, who has
been visually impaired since childhood. 

She says the project is the result of "four consecutive
years of tragic events" in her life. 

"Two years ago I had to confront my visual impairment for
the first time ever in forty years and I hated it," she told
the BBC News website. 

"BlindArt is my way of coming out and saying to the world,
'yes, I am visually impaired and, yes, it's fine'." 

The 62 works of art include oil paintings, acrylic on
aluminium, mixed media pieces using paper and collage, woven
pieces and sculptures in bronze and wood. 

  


Picture gallery: Highlights from the exhibition 

One piece - made from cast nylon - shows the movements of a
bird's wings in flight, and like most of the other works can
be touched as well as viewed. 

Another - entitled Pinky and Perky - is a large, latex bra
with the cups sculpted into pigs' heads. 

Although the artist, Carrie Riechardt, offered to wear it
for the exhibition, it was decided that it would be better
displayed on a tailor's dummy. 

Universal access 

Sense and Sensuality has been designed to be accessible to
the widest possible audience. 

Most of the pieces can be touched, all are audio described,
labels are in large print and Braille, and British Sign
Language guided tours will be available. 

The works are hung at low level so that they can be explored
through touch, plinths have been designed with wheelchair
users in mind and the gallery floor will have colour
contrast and texture to help orientate visually impaired
visitors. 

The winner of the competition will receive £5,000 and
BlindArt will purchase one of the works for its permanent
collection. 





In the eye of the beholder
Berkeley Art Museum and the Townsend Center take a closer
look at art and visual impairment in 'Blind at the Museum'
exhibit  

By Wendy Edelstein, Public Affairs | 02 March 2005

In conjunction with its "Blind at the Museum" exhibit, the
Berkeley Art Museum (BAM) is holding a two-day conference on
Friday and Saturday, March 11 and 12, to explore topics
related to visual impairment, art, access, and the role of
the viewer. 


In "A Chair Is Still a Chair, 2004," artist Kurt Weston used
caulk to create a touchable photograph and break down
barriers between art and viewers. Weston, who lost his sight
due to cytomegalovirus (CMV), considers his camera a
surrogate eye.  
"It's only right that this conference will be held in
Berkeley, with its history of disability rights and as the
home of the Center for Independent Living," says Katherine
Sherwood, associate professor of art practices and
co-curator of the exhibit.

Along with Georgina Kleege, an assistant professor of
English who is legally blind, Sherwood conceived the idea of
the conference, which she wanted to give "a Berkeley flair"
by centering it around disability studies. Kleege, who at
age 11 began grappling with the loss of her eyesight due to
macular degeneration, wrote Sight Unseen, part memoir and
part cultural critique of the world's stigmatization of
blindness. She will be the keynote speaker on Friday, March
11, at 4 p.m. 

A panel of artists featured in the exhibit — including Pedro
Hidalgo, Michael Richard, Kurt Weston, Alice Wingwall, and
moderator Kari Orvik from the nonprofit organization
Lighthouse for the Blind — will follow at 5 p.m. 

Andrew Potok, author of Ordinary Daylight: Portrait of an
Artist Going Blind, will begin the Saturday, March 12,
session at 10 a.m. Joseph Grigely, an artist in the exhibit
who is professor of visual and critical studies at the
School of the Art Institute of Chicago, will give a talk at
1:30. Panels that day will examine interventions and
technologies as they relate to viewing artwork, look at the
perceptual experience of unsighted people, and explore the
historical and social contexts for understanding blindness.
For information, visit
bampfa.berkeley.edu/education/blind/index.html.

Portrait of a blind photographer 

Before she began losing her eyesight late in life to
retinitis pigmentosa, Alice Wingwall was a fully sighted
conceptual artist and photographer. As her sight gradually
diminished, Wingwall decided not to relinquish her
photography. To those who ask her how she could possibly
take pictures as a blind person, Wingwall responds, "Any
photograph begins with an idea in the brain." Assistants
help the artist keep her automatic camera pointed at the
image she describes to them from her mind's eye.


Artist Alice Wingwall, who felt a powerful bond with her
first guide dog, wanted to share her passion for
architecture with him. In “Hand Over Dog: Joseph at the
Temple of Dendur, The Metropolitan of Museum of Art, 1995”
the artist directs her beloved guide dog’s attention to
Egyptian gates dating back to 15 B.C.E.  
In conjunction with "Blind at the Museum," the Townsend
Center for the Humanities has mounted a companion show,
"Alice Wingwall: Portrait Selves," that will be on exhibit
through April 4. At 4 p.m. today, March 3, the center will
hold a reception and screen the photographer's film Miss
Blindsight: The Wingwall Auditions. John Terry, dean of fine
arts at Rhode Island School of Design, will discuss the film
and then engage Wingwall in a discussion on the
intersections between visual impairments and visual arts.
Beth Dungan, co-curator of the "Blind at the Museum"
exhibit, will discuss several of Wingwall's works in detail.
The event will be followed by a reception. For information,
call 643-9470 or visit
townsendcenter.berkeley.edu/exhibits.shtml.





Cartoonist’s ‘little guy’ fights system with humor 
Publish Date: March 3, 2005  |  Permanent Link

Self-portrait by Gary Oliver

By Tom Shuford
News editor

    There’s a “little guy” spirit that permeates Gary
Oliver’s political cartoons.
    It’s almost Don Quixote-like as his anti-hero characters
– born of the 60s anti-establishment attitude – tackle one
hot-button issue after another in what Oliver likes to refer
to as the “outrage du jour.”
    Examples of Oliver’s cartoon art are currently displayed
at the Waterstop Gallery of the Marfa Studio of Arts, 106 E.
San Antonio St., in Marfa as part of a two-man show with
cartoonist Tom Curry of Alpine.
    Whether it’s facing down the trucks of “La Entrada” or
preserving West Texas from those who’d make it a receptacle
for nuclear waste, Oliver’s cartoon characters give voice to
the belief that sometimes, just sometimes, persistent
opposition by the little guy can defeat the forces of power.
    It’s an attitude that comes straight from Oliver’s life.
    Born in 1947, Oliver grew up in Beaumont, where doctors
discovered fairly quickly he had problems with his eyesight.
Oliver said he remembers numerous trips to Houston
specialists, who determined that he was color blind,
cross-eyed and the victim of a rare condition known as
“nystagmus” that is marked by an almost constant,
involuntary movement of the eyeball.
    In a phrase, Oliver is legally blind.
    But Oliver never has been one to accept other people’s
judgments. He tried playing baseball with the other kids,
stepping up to home plate with a baseball bat poised for
action. A wild pitch hit him square in the middle of his
head.
    “Everybody else ducked,” Oliver said. “They saw it
coming.”
    After that, he decided to do different things with his
spare time – like drawing comics, a hobby since he was 5 or
6 years old.
    At school, he used binoculars to read the blackboard. He
excelled academically; he had to because there always seemed
to be some well-intentioned teacher who wanted to ship him
off to a special school for the blind.
    “I don’t belong in the world of the blind,” Oliver said.
    Sometimes it took a bit of scamming on his part with the
help of willing friends to stay one step ahead of the
system. Getting a job was especially difficult for Oliver
since he couldn’t read the application forms very well.
Friends applied for the same job and filched a blank
application form that Oliver could study before going to a
job interview.
    To this day, Oliver can still quote the letters in order
on the standardized eye charts used by the driver’s license
bureau during the 50s – a skill he mastered so he could get
a license for the motorbike he rode around town.
    But sometimes things almost backfired.
    As editorial page editor for his high school paper,
Oliver won a University Interscholastic League prize for one
of his editorial cartoons. A trip to Austin to collect his
prize convinced Oliver that Austin would be “a cool place”
to go to college – if he could find the tuition money.
    A teacher had suggested that one of the state agencies
might help because of his eyesight. One afternoon, he came
tooling up on is bike to his parents’ house in Beaumont to
find a black-suited representative of the Texas Commission
for the Blind waiting for him to determine his eligibility
for free tuition – a benefit given by law to the blind at
state universities.
    “He didn’t say anything about the bike till the end of
the interview,” Oliver said.
    “Normally, we send blind students to a special Braille
camp,” the agency representative said, looking toward
Oliver’s motorbike. “But I think we can forego that in this
instance.”
    Putting his hand on the bike, he added, “And take it
easy on this.”
    In 1970, Oliver graduated from UT-Austin with a
bachelor’s in English and joined two other students in
opening “the only dive listed in the Yellow Pages” – known
as One Knite, which soon became home to a burgeoning group
of musicians, who performed for little more than money
garnered by “passing the hat.”
    Jimmie Vaughan and his band, The Storm, approached
Oliver and his associates about playing on Monday nights,
normally a dead night for most clubs.
    “We didn’t even have a stage,” Oliver said.
    So they quickly acquired lumber, built a platform and
hung curtains behind it. For the next five years The Storm
played Monday nights as more and more musicians walked
through the coffin-shaped door of the club at Eighth and Red
River.
    “We were booked seven nights a week,” Oliver said.
    An audio enthusiast, Oliver recorded many of the bands’
performances at the club on reel-to-reel – one such 1972
recording of the Flatlanders has been released recently on
CD.
    By 1976, the Austin music scene was changing as country
rock went more “upscale” and punk began filling in. Oliver
was ready for a change and began a series of backpacking
sagas through Latin America, Europe and much of the United
States that lasted until 1983, when he arrived in Marfa in
time for the town’s centennial.
    An unpublished book, drawn during his backpacking years,
features Oliver as a central character. A British publisher
once expressed interest in the comic series and urged Oliver
to hand-letter all of the “word balloons” in the strips.
    “A bad decision,” Oliver said, “that cost me years of my
life.”
    Although the book was not published, a number of
individual strips have been.
    The strips are a distillation of a journey Oliver made
that was both geographic and psychological.
    “Before I went to South America, I was looking for
points I wanted to make,” Oliver said. “Afterward, I found
that it gave me more of a voice.”
    In 1983, he published his first political cartoon for
The Big Bend Sentinel, an opening shot in the battle against
the state’s effort to put a nuclear waste dump in West
Texas. In 1986, he began drawing cartoons for a high-end
audio equipment magazine, Absolute Sound.
    In the mid-90s, Oliver was picked up by Copley News
Service and asked to do a series of cartoons based around
NAFTA issues as part of a package deal the syndicate was
offering publications.
    “They thought there would be interest in Mexico,” Oliver
said.
    He drew two years’ worth of cartoons for them in both
English and Spanish.
    “It took a lot of reading, then distilling it into a gag
and finally translating it into Spanish,” Oliver said.
    Currently, he draws for a number of newspapers and
journals but would like to have a chance to draw a political
comic strip that would allow him to deal with on-going
political themes – much as Walt Kelly did during the 1950s
with his comic strip, “Pogo.” 
    Oliver believes the present era is similar to the 1950s
when one of Kelly’s characters – Simple J. Malarky – carried
around a list of “traitors to the swamp,” a parody of Sen.
Joseph McCarthy, then at the height of his power.
    “It was the greatest political comic strip and the best
known before ‘Doonesbury,’” Oliver said.
    The market for political strips is shrinking, Oliver
said, and the system is designed to “tame” the more
politically volatile cartoonists who want to speak for the
“little guy.”
    “The trick is,” Oliver said, “to get ideas through that
they don’t want you to.” 


New Software May Offer a Rainbow of Sound

 By Mike Martin
NewsFactor Network
March 4, 2005 5:39PM 

"We started with the basic research question of how to
represent a detailed color-scaled image to someone who is
blind," says research associate James Ferwerda from the
Cornell program in computer graphics. "The most natural
approach was to try sound."  

 
Blue Morning, Blue Day. Yellow Submarine. Brown-eyed Girl.
Purple People Eater. 
>From the Red Hot Chili Peppers to Pink and Pink Floyd, music
can certainly be colorful. 

But can color be musical? 

Yes -- with the right software, say Cornell University
researchers who hope a rainbow of melodies will bring the
color of life to the visually impaired. 

"Color is something that does not exist in the world of a
blind person," said Cornell department of electrical and
computer engineering graduate student Victor Wong, who lost
his sight in a traffic accident at age seven. "I could see
before, so I know what it is. But there is no way that I can
think of to give an exact idea of color to someone who has
never seen before." 

 
Color with a Capital See 

Necessity is supposed to be the mother of invention, and
Wong's doctoral work -- which required that he read
color-scaled weather maps of the Earth's upper atmosphere --
was the necessity that inspired him to invent image-to-sound
software. 

"Color is an extra dimension," in the weather maps, Wong
explained. Subtle color changes represent minute weather
fluctuations. 

"There is no question that color is one important thing
communicated visually, which blind people would benefit from
having," said Gary Wunder, a University of Missouri (MU)
computer programmer and president of the Missouri chapter of
the National Federation of the Blind. "This is true not only
for weather maps, but also for something as simple as
looking at a color-coded timeline." 

At first, Wong's graduate advisor Mike Kelley verbally
described the maps. They also tried printing the maps in
Braille. 

When neither approach worked, they turned to sound. 

"We started with the basic research question of how to
represent a detailed color-scaled image to someone who is
blind," said research associate James Ferwerda from the
Cornell program in computer graphics. "The most natural
approach was to try sound, since color and pitch can be
directly related, and sensitivity to changes in pitch is
quite good." 

Cornell undergraduate engineering student Ankur Moitra wrote
a Java computer code that could translate images into sound,
and later, convert pixels of various colors into piano notes
of various tones. 

Polly Wants a Color 

With the new software loaded, Wong guided a stylus on a
computerized tablet with a color photograph of a parrot.
With each change in color and tone, piano notes sang color
resolution in 88 gradations, ranging from blue for the
lowest notes to red for the highest. 

The software also has an image-to-speech feature that reads
aloud the numerical values of the map's coordinates and
values associated with a color at any given point on the
image. 

"In principle, I could turn off the music and just have the
software read out the value of each point," Wong told
NewsFactor. 

To Sea or Not To See 

Boundary recognition -- the so-called "land-and-sea" problem
-- posed another challenge. 

"Sometimes I just want to know where is the land and where
is the sea," said Wong. 

A simple way to delineate boundaries -- coloring the right
half of an image blue and the left half red -- becomes
complicated because Wong has to move the stylus back and
forth continuously from one color to the next. 

Trying to home in on the boundary by this trial and error
method is time-consuming and error-prone, so Wong, Moitra
and Ferwerda are working to develop software that can
effectively pick out the important boundaries in an image. 

"Tackling complex color images is only one problem out of
many that blind scientists are facing," Wong explained. 

Blind scientists and the visually impaired, generally, MU's
Wunder noted. 

"Inexpensive color recognition could also be helpful in
matching clothing and helping blind people work on circuitry
where color coding is important," he told NewsFactor. 



New systems enhance plays
Friday, March 04, 2005

By Katy Buchanan, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Regular theater-goers may be familiar with the experience of
straining to see from less-than-optimum seats. Or with the
annoying sound of nearby patrons crinkling candy wrappers or
whispering too loudly.

But those irritations pale in comparison with the
limitations faced by lovers of the performing arts who have
visual or hearing impairments.

Two new assistive technologies that help those patrons more
fully enjoy the theater experience will be showcased here in
the coming week.

One, called live audio description, will be available during
City Theatre's matinee of "Fiction" at 2 p.m. Sunday.

Patrons who are blind or have low vision are given headsets
and small receivers. A trained describer, speaking into a
microphone, relates actions happening onstage, giving
details about sets, costumes, lighting, and other theatrical
elements not obvious from the dialogue.

"It's really the first live theater that's being
audio-described in the Western Pennsylvania region," said
Diane L. Nutting, City Theatre's director of education.

Another aid is a "sensory forum" at 1 p.m. that allows low
vision patrons to tour the stage for an overview to create a
kind of "tactile map of it in their mind."

This is kind of a test-run for the technology, and Nutting
said that feedback during a post-show symposium will give
City Theatre direction on how to improve live audio
description next season, when it will be offered for all
productions.

"The next step of the project over the summer will be a
training program for audio describers," she said. The goal
is to train between 12 and 20.

In addition, City Theatre expects to work with other
cultural organizations locally to serve as a kind of
clearinghouse for the acquisition of the technology.

The project is funded by a $25,000 Verizon Foundation grant
funneled through VSA Arts of Pennsylvania. VSA Arts is an
international organization that promotes equal opportunities
in the arts for people with disabilities.

There is no charge for live audio description, Nutting said,
but patrons are requested to call ahead to reserve it at
412-431-2489. Choose the option that lets you speak to a box
office representative.

At Heinz Hall on Tuesday, some patrons with hearing
impairments will be able to take advantage of a system
called I-Caption during the production of "Big River," a
musical that is sung, spoken and signed.

It features a hand-held unit about the size of an index card
that displays the text of the entire show verbatim,
including lyrics and dialogue. The text is automated and
synchronized with sound and lighting cues. A polarized
screen keeps nearby patrons from being distracted by light
or moving text.

"Some people don't know sign language, so it adds another
layer of accessibility," said Jennifer Graves, of the tour's
management.

There is no charge for use of the device, but there are only
10 units with the tour, so they'll be available on a
first-come, first-served basis, she said.

I-Caption was developed by the Sound Associates Inc., of New
York, which won a Tony Award in 1980 for introducing the
Infrared Listening System to Broadway theaters.



          
Visitors will soon get feel of Manhattan Beach park 
Twelve Braille markers will help the blind navigate a trail
in the city's Polliwog Park.
By Deepa Bharath 
Daily Breeze

"Hello.

"You're entering Polliwog Park.

 
 
"Does that sound like a funny name for a park?

"Well, there's a special reason why it has this name."

These four lines are the first part of a narrative welcoming
visitors to the Manhattan Beach park's first ever Braille
trail.

On Tuesday night, City Council members unanimously approved
a proposal to install 12 pedestals along a pathway in the
northwest corner of Polliwog Park with the history of the
park written in Braille so the visually impaired can learn
about it and enjoy the ambience independently as they walk
along the trail.

The project was initiated by the Manhattan Beach Lions Club,
which will also sponsor it. The entire trail is expected to
cost about $3,000, said Marge Crutchfield, project
chairwoman, who also wrote the narrative to be inscribed on
the pedestals.

"The material was primarily written to reach children," she
said. "We believe that this can do a lot to help our
children respect differences, understand diversities and
learn a little bit about our town's history as well."

Each of the platforms bears a nugget of Manhattan Beach
history to sustain visitors' interest and make it an
educational experience for younger visitors, Crutchfield
said.

The pedestals, which will consist of galvanized metal posts
topped with a composite surface bearing the inscriptions,
will need minimum or no maintenance, said Lea Ann Myers, a
project consultant.

"A number of Braille trails in Orange County and elsewhere
are gone because the poles were constructed of cheaper
materials like plastic, which falls apart in five years or
less," she said. "The metal ones that are going up at
Polliwog Park are more expensive, but they'll definitely
last much longer."

Braille trails are a huge asset to the blind because it
gives them a sense of freedom, Myers said.

"They don't have to have people read things out to them,"
she said. "They can learn and experience it for themselves."

The trail will also have tactile bumps on the ground to lead
visitors along the path.

"When they get to one of the pedestals, there will be a
bigger bump to indicate that another Braille station is
coming up," Myers said.

English translations will also be inscribed for the benefit
of the sighted or those who can't read Braille.

Lions Club members will take turns inspecting the trail
weekly once it is up, Crutchfield said.

"We're going to do that to make sure it's all right," she
said. "If something needs to be fixed, the Lions Club will
do that as well."

They expect the trail to be finished by summer although the
club is still looking for money to fund the project,
Crutchfield said. She asks those interested in contributing
to contact club president Dan DuRoss at 310-937-9381.



Feeling short-changed
By Theresa Edo / Daily News Staff
Friday, March 4, 2005

All people, including someone who is blind getting change
back for a pizza delivery and another with sight reaching
for change at a highway toll booth, can benefit from paper
money with a different feel, Kevin Heaton said. 
 
     Heaton, 25, who is visually impaired, is working with
an independent group of blind and sighted activists called
OurMoneyToo.org to shed some light on an issue that is
decades old -- adding tactile features, that is, anything
that can be felt, to U.S. paper currency. 
 
     Since American paper money is all the same size, shape
and ure, it is impossible to distinguish between bills
without looking at them. Keeping tabs on paper money can
slow down sighted people, but it causes constant problems
for people who are blind or visually impaired, said Heaton,
an Ashland resident. 
 
     "We just want money that would be accessible to
everyone," said Heaton, who graduated last spring from
Westfield State College with a degree in political science. 
 
     Members of the Massachusetts Alliance of Vision
Impaired Students this fall established the group and its
Web site, www.OurMoneyToo.org. The site provides information
on currency with tactile features and ways to contact
members of Congress. 
 
     OurMoneyToo.org is hosting an event Wednesday, noon to
2 p.m., in Boston's City Hall Plaza to raise awareness for
its cause. Members will be imprinting Braille on money and
displaying examples of foreign currency with different
tactile features. 
 
     "We chose this issue because it's do-able. Other
countries have done it," said OurMoneyToo.org member Alison
Roberts of Arlington. "We change our currency every few
years anyway to keep ahead of counterfeiters. Why not
include this?" 
 
     More than 100 countries have already incorporated size
variation or some other distinctive tactile feature to make
their paper currency easier to use, the group said. Canadian
dollars have a system of raised symbols; British pounds can
be distinguished by size; and Euros use a combination of
features. 
 
     "It's not fair to ask blind people to be more organized
with their money," said Roberts. 
 
     People who are blind must fold their bills in different
ways, keep them in separate compartments in their wallet or
simply trust that others are not switching bills without
their knowledge. Or, they must purchase reading machines,
often priced near $300, that, like vending machines, often
do not work with anything but crisp, new bills. 
 
     "When I was in high school, I wasn't able to work as a
cashier," said Heaton. "A cashier is an entry-level job. But
it was hard to get." 
 
     Opponents say it is too costly and too involved to
update the entire American system for exchanging money. But
advocates of tactile features on paper currency say it could
benefit everyone. 
 
     "Some people would say it is an accommodation for
people who are blind, but I say it enhances their
independence," said Dennis Polselli, chairman of
Framingham's Disability Commission. 
 
     Polselli, who is blind, said he believes the U.S.
Treasury Department should take a closer look at the issue. 
 
     "The government gives us all kinds of excuses," said
Polselli, Disabilities Service Coordinator for Framingham
State College. "It almost seems offensive that we would have
to launch a lobbying effort for something that seems so
obvious." 
 
     State Rep. Tom Sannicandro, D-Ashland, believes
changing paper currency is an important issue to review, but
the question remains how to get it done. 
 
     "It's an easy thing for the government to fix, and it
would help everyone," said Sannicandro. 
 
     Sannicandro said he urges anyone concerned about this
or any issue to lobby their legislator, both via letters and
in person.