Haptic Representation of Scientific Data for Visually Impaired or Blind Persons

Interpretation and understanding of complex scientific data is enhanced by graphic representation. For those people with visual impairments, this method is inadequate. An alternative, or additional, method is to represent the data using other modalities, namely touch and hearing. Haptic display of such graphical data adds kinesthetic feedback that provides the sense of touch. Audio feedback adds additional information to the haptic display to further improve conceptualization. In this paper, we review some of the existing methods of non-visual data representation, and present two new methods. The first method extends the capabilities of printing tactile graphics. With the aid of image processing techniques, complex images can be printed in a fashion that is more comprehensible as a tactile graphic. The second technique takes advantage of emerging haptic interface technology with a three degree of freedom (DOF) force feedback mechanism. This allows users to interact with two and three dimensional data plots with their fingertip. In addition, aural information and various haptic techniques can be added to aid in navigation and understanding. These two methods of non-visual data rendering extend current techniques and will eventually allow people to gain insight into scientific data without the use of