A significant proportion of educational materials are simple charts such as bar and pie charts. In order to speed up transcription of such simple graphics we have developed an application that is designed to semi automate the construction of tactile bar and pie charts from data values given in a formatted text file. It is analogous to the graphing tools found in software such as Microsoft Excel and OpenOffice Spreadsheet, but designed with tactile presentation in mind.
The tool provides a wide variety of layout styles. While the tool allows the user to fine tune the layout, the generated SVG diagram can also be modified in a standard diagram editor. It has been developed in collaboration with Vision Australia and has been improved by extensive feedback from the transcribers.
The tool has been implemented in Java by using object-oriented technology. It uses Batik SVG Toolkit for generating the SVG output, and BrailleTrans library to generate the grade 1 and grade 2 braille texts.
Prior knowledge of topic assumed: Low
Contains advanced technical content: Yes
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