The first is if you think of students who are in kindergarten today, they'll be graduating from high school in the year 2006. After what we've heard today, it's critically important that students get a foundation in the skills of being able to interpret a tactile diagram. Today if a student graduates from high school without computer skills, without the knowledge that with speech, large print, or Braille they can use a computer, we don't think the school system has done its job. And we would say that that student is ineligible for a high percentage of the jobs that are available. It seem a conservative estimate to say that by the year 2006 those same kinds of statements will apply to a student's tactile interpretation skills. Having those skills, the ability to efficiently interpret a tactile diagram or a tactile display, could be just as critical in getting a job or being competitive in employment.
My second point is that the skill of learning how to interpret a tactile diagram is a separate and distinct skill just like any other that needs to be taught in school. Unfortunately, a lot of teachers think that students just pick up that skill when they need the first tactile diagram. As an itinerate teacher with some very bright students, I will never forget the first tactile diagram that I introduced to my brightest student who was a seventh grader. It was the first time that I thought a verbal description wasn't good enough and the student approached that picture which was an x-y kind of diagram with two fingers and was never going to interpret that picture. I was in shock. This was a bright student and I thought this would come naturally. It doesn't come naturally to hardly any blind adults, it does to some, but not to many.
What you have to do, and unfortunately it's embarrassing and awkward if you wait until the seventh grade or later to introduce your first tactile graphic, is back off that instructional material and use a simpler tactile diagram to teach the tactile interpretation skills. For that particular student who I said was bright and in seventh grade, I drew a large circle on a piece of paper and a small square in the corner. I said here's a picture of a large circle and a little square in the corner on the bottom right hand side. Can you find that? We had to start with exercises like that and gradually build up to interpreting the x-y diagram that was the subject matter of the seventh grade class. We saw that example with your pizza and ice cream. You couldn't teach tactile interpretation skills while you're teaching biology or anatomy. You had to back up and make almost an artificial diagram, just to teach the tactile diagram skills.
Third point. When you introduce the tactile diagram, whether it's to a kindergartner or to an adult, it's important that it be presented in an informational way, not as a guessing game. Many times I've seen a person hand a tactile diagram to someone and say "can you tell what this is?" You have to keep in mind that a Braille diagram done by a Braille printer, 11 by 11 1/2 inch size, a diagram of a cat, or a diagram of the Empire State building is going to occupy roughly the same amount of space on that paper. So, the person approaching that picture tactilly doesn't have a clue in terms of a frame of reference. So it's rarely productive to say "can you tell what this is?" It makes so much more sense to say, "This is a diagram of a church. You'll see the pointed steeple at the top" or one little bit of information to give the person a starting point to get some meaning from that picture.
My last point is just an easy way to remember this. When you're teaching tactile graphics, you either start early, or you start easy. That is, if you're starting with a kindergartner I don't think you have to be terribly particular about what pictures you put in a tactile form. If you can put every picture that every other kindergartner is coloring into a tactile form that would probably be productive for a kindergartner. But if this is a seventh grader or a sixth grader, or even a fifth grader, you need to start easy then. And that is, an instructional kind of diagram, not one that's actually covering the curriculum material. Those are my four comments. What I've brought from Telesensory is the OsCaR and VersaPoint which lets you instantly produce a raised dot type of graphic. Any questions?
Thank you Cathy. That's information that is essential for any one who gets in the field of tactile graphics and it's an area that is so often forgotten by many of us. As we work toward developing new technology, or new techniques, we forget the human part of it which is the training.