Touching the stars: improving NASA 3D printed data sets with blind and visually impaired audiences
Kimberly Kowal Arcand, April Jubett, Megan Watzke, Sara Price, Kelly T.S. Williamson, Peter Edmonds (Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory)
(Submitted on 15 Jun 2019)
Astronomy has been an inherently visual area of science for millenia, yet a majority of its significant discoveries take place in wavelengths beyond human vision. There are many people, including those with low or no vision, who cannot participate fully in such discoveries if visual media is the primary communication mechanism. Numerous efforts have worked to address equity of accessibility to such knowledge sharing, such as through the creation of three dimensional (3D) printed data sets. This paper describes progress made through technological and programmatic developments in tactile 3D models using the NASA Chandra X-ray Observatory to improve access to data.
Comments: 22 pages, 6 figures
Subjects: Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM); High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE)
Cite as: arXiv:1906.06457 [astro-ph.IM] (or arXiv:1906.06457v1 [astro-ph.IM] for this version)
Submission history
From: Sara Price
[v1] Sat, 15 Jun 2019 02:48:19 UTC (999 KB)
