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Drawing For The Blind
idletask writes: "Hesham Kamel, a student from University of Berkeley who lost his vision 17 years ago due to a surgeon error, imagined and implemented IC2D (Integrated Communication 2 Draw), a program allowing visually impaired people in general to create computer graphics. The interface to the program is a mere telephone keypad, and it uses voice synthesis to communicate with the user. In fact, this program reveals, through its testers, that yes, blind people know how to draw, and they're as good at it as other people. More information on this program can be found here (1) and here (2). Story found on ArsTechnica."
Details:
IRC Server - 208.252.182.107
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Channel - #trolls
You need an IRC client to chat on the IRC server.
Details:
IRC Server - 208.252.182.107
Port - 6667
Channel - #trolls
You need an IRC client to chat on the IRC server.
Details:
IRC Server - 208.252.182.107
Port - 6667
Channel - #trolls
You need an IRC client to chat on the IRC server.
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EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE E
How does your screenreader like THAT, you pathetic cripple?
Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
blind people know how to draw, and they're as good at it as other people.
Well, if the poster had seen any of my "artwork", he'd know that that isn't saying very much.
That's really neat and all, and it's a good idea, and a lot of people are probably going to try it out, but..... If they're "visually impaired", how are they going to enjoy their own work?
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.
You should have waited for drdink to come back from vacation to post that story.
Don't mod me, bro'!!!!
So whatever happened to Linux At tech expo open source software is hard to find By John W SchoenMSNBC NEW YORK June 26 Just a few years ago one of the hottest topics at this annual confluence of PC hardware and software makers was the socalled open source alternative to Microsofts industrydominant Windows operating system Soon open source proponents argued PC users would be liberated from the burden of paying for software The Linux operating system and other open source alternatives written by devoted bands of volunteer programmers would be available to anyone for the cost of a download But today Windows is still running on the vast majority of PCs So what happened LINUX HASNT gone away But after attracting widespread attention and generating several moonshot initial public offerings during the tech boom purveyors of Linux software and support have fallen back to earth along with their stocks Earlier this month Red Hat which sells about half of all Linux software reported a loss of 43 million on an 8 percent drop in revenues in the latest quarter as corporate customers continued to squeeze every penny of their computer budgets Ironically those tight budgets have helped fuel adoption of Linux by managers of large corporate technology departments Created by Finish college student Linus Torvalds and continually updated and improved by a loose confederation of programmers who arent paid for their work Linux is available without the steep licensing fees that come with commercially produced software Companies like Red Hat sell upgraded versions and provide technical support but dont charge licensing fees Those continuing upgrades have begun to generate increased interest from costconscious technology managers A recent survey of 800 companies in North America and Western Europe found that some 40 percent said they were either using or testing Linux according to the research firm IDC With some 27 percent of the market Linux is now the second most popular operating system for servers supplanting the decadesold operating system UNIX Microsoft holds the top spot MSNBC is a MicrosoftNBC joint venture Numbers like those have caught the attention of computer hardware makers Last year as the personal computer slogged through the worst sales crash in its history Linux server sales jumped by more than 50 percent to 400 million with IBM leading the pack Linux used to be just a bunch of geeks trying to change the industry said Elizabeth Phillips a HewlettPackard spokesperson Now Linux is becoming more mainstream every day Linux is also shining brightly on the radar screens of software makers like Oracle which is heavily marketing the latest version of its highend corporate enterprise software which generates mainframelike horsepower using clusters of relatively cheap servers running Linux LINUX BOOT CAMP But Linux has hardly made a dent in the desktop and home user markets At PC conventions like this one Microsofts Windows operating system still rules with some 94 percent of the operating system market for desktops and laptop PCs according to IDC Despite its growing popularity among computer professionals its still not completely user friendly Its for geeks said Faber Fedor a New Jerseybased consultant who helps small businesses upgrade to Linux Near the end of a long hallway in the basement of the Jacob Javits Center at a wellattended conference called Linux Boot Camp Fedor walked a roomful of developers and IT managers through the basics and not so basics of converting to the Linux world Until recently interacting with Linux was almost entirely textdriven much like Windows precursor DOS So converting meant learning an arcane vocabulary of computerese to give the PC even the simplest commands But Linux software is getting better and now more closely mimics the Windows world that the vast majority of PC users are accustomed to A Linuxbased opensource email program called Evolution looks pretty much like a standard Windows desktop OpenOffices provide most key features offered by Microsoft Office including a word processor spreadsheet and mail program Fedor says these alternatives offer more than a familiar look and feel We dont get viruses he said Last year viruses cost the business world billions but every one of those was on Windows WOOING THE HOME USER But adopters of Linux still face hurdles living in a Microsoft world High on the list of headaches is incompatibilities with files created with Microsoft products like Word Small software makers like Lindows are trying to help desktop users bridge that divide Still Linux evangelists like Fedor say that as long as new PCs come preloaded with Windows the open source community faces an uphill battle spreading Linux beyond corporate IT departments into the home Linux partisans point to some small victories WalMart recently began selling a house brand PC at rock bottom prices available with Linux for the thriftiest PC buyersThat thrift among home PC buyers though has further hampered the spread of Linux to home desktops Its another reason software developers like Dave Potter of Fountainville Pa prefer writing programs for corporate users He says he doesnt see much point writing Linux applications for individual PC buyers Home users are cheap he said At 4995 youre going to have to sell a whole lot of copies to make it in the market And as Linux proponents continue to try to enlist desktop PC users Microsoft is busy reinventing that desktop With sales of new PCs in their worst slump in decades Microsoft is hoping to reboot Windows sales by leading the charge toward the Tablet PC a sort of PDA on steroids With new technology to recognize and manipulate handwriting and speech Microsoft and its hardware and software partners are hoping to usher in a whole new platform by giving users all the capabilities of ink according to Microsoft Group Vice President Jeff Raikes Microsoft and the rest of the PC industry are hedging their bets by designing several variations of the device from a standalone tablet about the size of a standard piece of paper to a laptop with a display that flips around and folds flat with the screen facing outward The goal is to replace rather than augment existing PCs according to Leland Rockoff a director of Microsofts table PC project We see this as a primary PC he said Theyre not appliances theyre not companions theyre not secondary But Rockoff says the companys strategy with regard to open source software will be the same as it is with Windows XP
-pwpbot
Now I can play pictionary with blind people WITHOUT feeling like I have an unfair advatange!
Fault loves the past, worry loves the future, but content enjoys the present.
I think this is a wonderfull thing. We could get some very good works that would otherwize not existed.
Very similar to software that lets blind people use computers for general use.
It's all about using technology to let everyone have access, and become productive members of society.
http://www.xpurple.com
some kind of MUD game for the blind?
great idea anyway...
'...blind people know how to draw, and they're as good at it as other people'
Unfortunately, no, blind people are not as good at drawing as other people. If they were, then being blind wouldn't be such a problem would it?
Making such a claim doesn't help anyone.
I'm sure the tool is useful and no doubt some blind people have proved very adept at using it. I dare say some blind people can produce fairly impressive results ( considering that they are blind ) without the aid of the tool, but blind people cannot draw as well as the rest of us, otherwise there would have been a good many more 'blind' artists... though I confess that Jackson Pollock might have been blind for all I know.
I get lots of goatse popups when I open this page in mozilla. Doesn't seem to work in IE. Anyone else have this problem.
just testing a hopefully-former exploit
...is that the article says the system uses a telephone keypad for selecting where you want to put the cursor. Perhaps it's just a metaphor to make it easier to understand, but the keypad on a phone is upside down compared to the number pad on a computer keyboard. It would be rather confusing if the instructions said "press 1 for the top left corner," and you had to press the key that you were used to thinking of as "7". If this is a problem, I imagine it wouldn't be too difficult to add an option to invert the pad - rather like GUIs will let you use a mouse left-handed or right-handed.
That apart, this sounds like a very cool idea. I suppose we shouldn't be surprised that a blind person can draw if you give them the right tools. The main skill in drawing is observing things accurately - even if you draw from imagination, you're often remembering details of things you've seen. If you can't see your surroundings, then moving around without bumping into things or injuring yourself requires you to build an accurate mental model of the environment in 3 dimensions - observe it, in other words. The fact that collecting the information to build this model requires you to use senses other than sight is what project managers would call an "implementation detail." ;-)
Just another wannabe fantasy novelist...
WTF just happened? Slashdot just logged me back in. all of the links were broken or misdirecting before. who cracked /. and what did they do?
I want 2D games back.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
Piss piss piss piss lovley piss piss piss piss lovley lovley piss
This story reminded me of this Star Trek episode where Riker says:
"A blind man teaching an android to paint? That's gotta be worth something to someone."
True warriors use the Klingon Google
I wonder about people who have ALWAYS been blind. I am not really surprised at all that someone who became blind at some point in life after seeing can draw.
I am browing /. and JavaScrip pop-up windows start coming up and call me a homosexual and the articles redirect themselves to goatse site ? Somebody pw33ned /. ?
You really fucked up slashdot! Loads of readers got goatsed, computers crashed, and took slashdot down for about an hour! Shame its been fixed now! Keep on looking for exploits to fuck up slashdot!
This happens a lot, I'd imagine due to heavy site traffic. If you visit during peak hours (aka 9 to 5) the logins and comments below the first level break.
/." you mean "broke /." I'm afraid it's been broken since inception.
And if by "cracked
Don't see the canvas...BE the canvas.
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
so WHO just hacked slashdot???? all links were broken, kept taking me back to main page. Very funny. NOT
And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbour Isaiah 3:5
slashdot belongs to the trolls now, as it always has. Please stay in your seats, keep your seatbelts fastened, and take those dildos out of your asses you dirty pedophiles.
"Kamel, 40, who lost his vision 17 years ago through a surgeon's error." Damn, I'd be pissed! I hope he got a nice settlement out of that one.
can you see me now? good!!
--fetch daddy's blue fright wig, i must be handsome when i release my rage
"blind people know how to draw, and they're as good at it as other people."
Did the other people have their eyes closed?
I know you moron Slashdot editors absolutely abhor fact checking your articles and gaining any resemblence of journalistic intregrity, but I thought you might like to know that the name of the university is the "University of California at Berkeley." If you're looking to save space you could just say "UC Berkeley."
She will be able to write complete arrangements and do sequencing and other stuff without her sight. I think thats pretty rad!
What happened was that someone exploited a bug in the HTML tag handling code in Slashcode.
They managed to insert things like this:
<P > onmouseover=" alert('You are now being redirected to our sponsors..'); for(;;) window.open('http://goatse.cx'); ">
and this:
<P > onmouseover=" for(a=0; a!=document.links.length; a++) document.links[a] = 'http://goatse.cx'; ">
so that when you mouse travels over the text, it opens up lots of goatses, or changes all links to goatse.cx, or whatever.
Clever stuff!
A deaf man composed some of the greatest music the world has ever heard. When will a blind man come along that will draw the greatest paintings? Mad Hatter
From what I know (because unforuntatly I noticed this) the obnoxious bastard who promotes goatse(you know the ending - I refuse to finish that) is getting more crafty. can you say lot's of popups.
I don't know how (although I'm sure it wasn't dificult)
Blink
No, but I can say LOTS of popups, you imbicile.
Wasn't Ludwig hearing impaired?
slashcode is a piece of shit
People who are born blind don't know how to draw. People who are born sighted do. Not all blind people can draw. Clear?
I guess this was how the Pontiac Aztek was designed...
Ok, I'll ask it...what the hell is the point? They'll never see anything they draw.
The comments about a certain deaf composer (Beethoven I assume) ignore the fact that he only lost (gradually) his hearing at the very end of his life. He had a sense of music based on hearing long before that and he could still analyze music via studying notation.
It reminds me of how the AMC built a handicapped accessible mountain hut to satisfy the mindless PC police. A bunch of heavily assisted people in modified wheelchairs managed to slog their way up to it the first month it was open just to make a point and it hasn't seen a single person in a wheelchair since then. This isn't surprising since it is on a very rugged trail not a sidewalk!
Next thing you know they'll be demanding a ramp to the top of Devil's Tower because it isn't accessible Federal property.
I can only imagine the kind of stuff a blind person would draw. Probably the kind of things that would make a powerful impression on anyone.
Honestly, I'd like to see a good blind artist become famous, it would be neat to see what people think.
It would be true art (and not in the Santa Fe sense, where you could barf on a canvas and sell it for $2700)
Linux is dead.
LU
After looking at some of Mr. Kamel's works I realised, according to the counter, that I was the 1st person to visit the page. This is after 47 comments. For shame.
Now on to my thought, Mr. Kamel is not tone deaf and there is the problem with repositioning the mouse to some point on the canvas. Is there any reason there could not be some sort of tonal feedback from the canvas to indicate where the mouse is positioned? I don't have time to invent it but the technology exists. Some of you folks have time to do it. We're talking sensors the size of a pixel and a modified mouse.
Do you have any Screenshots of this application ?
...
oh, wait
One could also use WordsEye and maybe add a speech frontend.
Marklar: marklar
Hey, the blind aren't that bad at "visualizing" and drawing, but web designers they are not. Red on green? Ug. :)
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
Re, If they're "visually impaired", how are they going to enjoy their own work?
Drawings aren't all just to look at.
Suppose you're visually impaired or even completely blind. You could use this tool for drawing architectural plans, circuit diagrams, garden layouts, org charts--anything you want.
Unfortunately the system doesn't appear to be able to tell the operator that red links on green background are very difficult to read!
"The interface to the program is a mere telephone keypad, and it uses voice synthesis to communicate with the user. In fact, this program reveals, through its testers, that yes, blind people know how to draw, and they're as good at it as other people."
As good as other blind people, or perhaps 5 year olds. No offense to them, only to the idiotic comparison.
Dirk
It could just as easily be argued that drawing is simply the process of conveying an idea from their mind's perception of it to an external manifestation. The fact that it requires a visual component is more of an afterthought. If I place an object in a black bag and have someone place their hand inside, feel the object, and then draw a picture of it (either by hand or some other means) with their eyes closed, the individual should still have an understanding of what the object is. I am left wondering how many of the people posting here that have commented on what a blind person can or can not do have actually seen, spoken to, or worked with a visually impaired or totally blind person. Judging by most of the comments here I would say not too many. A number of years ago a friend of mine (yes, who was blind) made a comment to me. He said "I am blind, not stupid." :)
"If you're not failing every now and again, it's a sign you're not doing anything very innovative." -- Woody Allen
I'm beginning to think that the Bakers are the only true innovators in natural language processing.
It seems it could all be done in software.
FRA: STFU GTFO
berkeley.edu = Univerity of California at Berkeley not University of Berkeley.
This reminds me of a company, Zform, that is starting up interactive games for the blind. I wonder how much longer it will be before the blind can get addicted to EverQuest like the seeing. ;-)
don't you think it's kinda wierd that this guy's site uses colors that aren't suitable for reading by colorblind people?
That was funny.
Surprised by Unicide! (fuck this shit)
The discovery that blind people can draw (and use techniques like obscuring and perspective) wasn't discovered here. I'd rather give credit to John M. Kennedy at the University of Toronto, a Cognitive Psychology prof who's been working with blind children for years.
He's published at least one book, "Drawing and the Blind" (Yale Press, 1993), and there's a course at Scarbourough College on the subject: PSYCH54S. The link will take you to the course notes, which includes excerpts from his book.