The braille cells can be used not only for the representation of letters, numbers, punctuation, musical notes, and many more symbols. They can represent a picture, which can be a simple drawing of a diagram, silhouette of an animal, Christmas tree, and far more. The key tool in this matter is an imagination of the braille painter.
How does it work?
It is simple. The braille cells can be arranged on the sheet easily in a desired shape. As they themselves bear the shape of some kind, depending on particular dots appearing or missing in the braille cell, they can be easily arranged to create the picture of the dots. This kind of braille graphics can not be robust enough for complex pictures, but can give a very nice outline and help to comprehend the graphical representation of simple pictures. Of course, there will always be a empty space between lines and a vertical bar of consequent “l” letters will not give us a dense line. Still though, it is simple and easy graphic production. The picture can be drawn on the slate with stylus, just remember to write it mirror-like. It can be also written by the braille typewriter. And for the braille embosser it is a piece of cake.
Inspirations and helping tools
If you are looking for a software to help with braille graphic, there are few of them.
QuickTac – Duxbury Systems, INC
QuickTac is available from Duxbury Systems at no charge. It is capable of drawing a picture for a chosen embosser. And more than braille graphics are possible. If the embosser is capable of drawing with dots in a continuous dot grid, it can offer a very nice dotted image, filling up the space between lines as well. The process takes only installing QuickTac, loading the bacground image to be drawn upon, drawing the dots and transferring the .sig image into the braille file in Duxbury.
Braille Art
Brailleart.org is an unique, interactive brailler grid is a useful tool for those, who want to use braille characters to create pictures. Dots can only be plotted in standard braille cell patterns. Each dot can be colored.
The site is recently in German only. English version is expected soon. Jump right on a clean Braille raster.
“Just for Fun” Braille Designs of the Path to Literacy
Drawing with braille cells can quickly become a passion. Many nice braille pictures can be found on a website of the Braille Designs of the Path to Literacy. The braille picture can be uploaded with a key for replication. This way the works can be easily shared and help to enrich any textbook in braille. Angel, elf, dragon, heart, and much more can be simply reproduced thanks to Edith West, who freely shares these braille designs.
Another software to create tactile images printable by a braille embosser is tactile view: http://www.tactileview.com from Thinkable http://www.thinkable.nl
Several features alow blind people to create or print tactile graphics with it:
– you can download images and embos like the Monalisa of Da Vinci, the Eiffel Tower or other famous things
– You can import each kind of image and embos
– You can use different options to create your own images, like creating a square, triangle or line by certain points
– You can add braille or raised letters