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[Joe Orozco]

Tablet provides graphics to visually impaired persons



By:

Sherry Mazzocchi

Issue date: 2/5/07 Section:

Karen Gourgey demonstrates the Talking Tactile Tablet, which helps the 
visually impared with visual concepts.

Media Credit:

John Lee

Karen Gourgey demonstrates the Talking Tactile Tablet, which helps the 
visually impared with visual concepts.



If you are currently reading The Ticker in its paper format, you probably 
don't have impaired vision. But imagine, just for a few minutes, that you 
do.

You have a cane, or even a trained and trustworthy guide dog to help you 
navigate the halls and find your way amidst people, elevators and doors. You 
arrive

at your Statistics 101 classroom. Maybe you even have a Braille textbook. 
But what happens when the teacher puts equations, charts and bell curves on 
the

blackboard? What do you do then?



Karen Gourgey understands this dilemma. Gourgey is the director of Baruch's 
Computer Center for Visually Impaired People (CCVIP). Last September, she 
and

Steve Landau of Touch Graphics, Inc. were awarded Baruch's first ever patent 
for a device that helps students learn visual concepts. Called the "Talking

Tactile Tablet," it incorporates Braille, raised graphics and voice 
technology to help students who are visually impaired.



The TTT is a small, portable device that can be plugged into any PC with a 
USB connection. Convenient and easy to use, no additional battery or drivers

are necessary.



The TTT is interactive and easy to use. It comes with a talking world map, 
games and an authoring tool, which can be used to develop new course 
curriculums.

Games like Snakes and Ladders are fun and designed so students can quickly 
grasp the concept of learning how to maneuver across the tablet and become 
familiar

with its graphics. "People who are visually impaired don't get a lot of 
training in graphics. My math teacher told me to skip over them," said 
Gourgey.

"And I went to a high school for the blind."



Because the TTT uses Braille, voice technology and raised graphics, it 
provides a multi-sensory learning experience. The screen is a dense fabric 
of fine

wires, which can be thought of as a mouse. A tablet, much a like a chapter 
in a book, is inserted into the TTT. When a user touches the screen, they 
can

either read Braille or run their fingers over a raised graphic while a 
synthesized voice describes it. Feeling a pie chart or a bell curve is an 
entirely

different learning experience than looking at a drawing on a board or 
textbook. Using vision to understand something can be a flat, intellectual 
experience.

But touching is to grasp a concept intimately and almost immediately 
internalize it.

Gourgey said, "People are so used to looking at things. But when people read 
Braille, the visual cortex is involved. They are using the same perceptual

mode, but the input stream is different."



One of the many benefits of the TTT, aside from being easy to use, is its 
wide range of applications. The TTT is being tested in Santa Monica with a 
learning

disabled student this semester. Applications for learning Braille in Spanish 
are being developed. The statistics program in the TTT was based on a 
textbook

by Annette Gourgey (Gourgey's sister-in-law), an instructor at BMCC.



The programs all have a main menu and a clear, consistent structure. The 
statistics program has review questions on each tablet. Students can listen 
to

the TTT's succinct answers as well as type in their own. The TTT uses two 
voices. One voice describes the graphics in a synthetic, digitized voice. 
The

other voice asks and answers questions in a recorded human voice. Landau 
said that speech technology is advancing. "Synthetic speech is now fairly 
human

sounding." Recorded human speech, while pleasing, is not always that 
practical. "It's very expensive," he said. "They are large files that are 
slow and

hard to load." TTT software currently sells for around $699.



Gourgey, who was born blind, has been with the CCVIP since the late 1970s. 
>From very early on in her career, she knew that fusing literacy with 
technology

would be the key to working with visually-impaired students. "The PC 
revolution in the '80s had to be for everyone," she said. "You need to know 
how to

use a computer. There is power and freedom in information."



Gourgey and Landau both say that Dr. Sally Mangold, who died of leukemia in 
2005, was an inspiration in their work. The founder of Educational Teaching

Aids, Mangold was considered an innovator in field of teaching visually 
impaired students. "She was a hero in the field, a teacher of teachers," 
said Gourgey.



The product developed by Gourgey and Landau does not exactly mirror the 
technology advanced by Mangold, but the ultimate outcome is the same. "This 
will

bridge the graphical literacy gap," said Gourgey, "and make it fun."

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