Vladimir L. Bulatov

Scientific diagrams made easy with IVEO TM

Virtually all modern scientific documents and textbooks use graphical illustrations and/or data displays. The ViewPlus IVEOTM technology, based on Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) is being developed to permit scientists to publish such graphics in a form fully usable by all people. The first release of IVEOTM was designed to make simple graphics accessible. Development of the second release, which includes improved text accessibility, linking, and interactivity, is described in this paper. We also discuss new research to expand accessibility of quantitative data in IVEOTM documents by using non-speech audio

Making journals accessible to the visually impaired: the future is near.

The American Physical Society (APS) has been a leader in using markup languages for publishing. ViewPlus has led development of innovative technologies for graphical information accessibility by people with print disabilities. APS, ViewPlus, and other collaborators in the Enhanced Reading Project are working together to develop the necessary technology and infrastructure for APS to publish its journals in the DAISY (Digital Accessible Information SYstem) eXtended Markup Language (XML) format, in which all text, math, and figures would be accessible to people who are blind or have other print disabilities. The first APS DAISY XML publications are targeted for late 2010.

Directly accessible mainstream graphical information

Plain text in well-authored electronic documents of nearly any format is accessible to a blind person who knows how to use a computer and screen reader. A great deal of common information is generally not presented as plain text however. Charts, diagrams, and graphs are common in business, scientific, and most professional literature. Maps and geographically-oriented data such as weather maps and complex census information would be virtually impossible to present in words. Until recently it has not been possible for authors of mainstream literature to present graphical information of these kinds in a format that could be accessed directly by blind people. In this paper, a new technology is described that does permit blind people to have direct access to most object-oriented graphical information. This new technology is possible because of two recent developments. One is the emergence of the mainstream SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) language. The second is the Tiger technology for embossing tactile graphics.

DAISY kindergarten books and rocket science journals

ViewPlus is creating universally-usable DAISY math and science supplementary curricula for United States kindergarten and first grade children. These books are rich in interactive, fully accessible graphics and may be read with modern DAISY software readers. Graphics are accessed by audio/touch using the ViewPlus IVEO technology. ViewPlus is also collaborating with the American Physical Society (APS) to permit APS journals to be published in this text+graphics DAISY format. APS is the leading publisher of professional physics journals in the world. Examples of a DAISY first grade science book and an APS journal article will be demonstrated at the conference.