The freedom to create interactive materials

Any teacher or parent of a blind or visually impaired child can now create his own interactive drawings – no skills needed!

What is Image Creator?  

Image Creator is the place where parents and teachers can easily create tactile drawings with audio descriptions from scratch or choose to add descriptions to already existing materials.

 

How does Image Creator work?

Image Creator has three main components: the Drawing Tool, the Editor and the Map. The first helps you create drawings from scratch and the second allows you to add descriptions to any drawing, while the last one allows you to easily create the map of your neighborhood.

 

1. Drawing Tool – Paint & Illustrator made easy*

You can use the Drawing Tool to make simplified drawings of the world around. It can be anything from bugs to portraits, or landscapes to vehicles.

The Drawing Tool offers four different functions:

 

a) Free drawing

You can use the Drawing Tool to create any drawing you like. You can create predefined shapes, add text and colour and also use the pencil to draw freely.

 

b) Clipart

There is an entire library of clipart you can use to create drawings easily. You just have to drag and drop your favourite elements. You can also upload your own clipart. We call the clipart in our library fixed proportional clipart because the elements adjust the size to each other to create a realistic drawing of the world.

 

c) Background

This function allows you to turn any picture on your computer into a drawing easily. You just have to upload the picture and then you can copy the lines and create a superimposed drawing. You can draw over the lines of any picture and fill sections with patterns to create drawings for visually impaired children.

 

2. Editor

Use the Editor to add captions to drawings or pictures. You can add as many words as you want to any part of the drawing or picture. Keep in mind that the descriptions work just like the indications given by the teacher, in a non-linear mode. While listening to them, blind children will have the freedom to explore tactile graphics independently.

You can also add a longer description of the drawing, to help boost the general knowledge of the children. It can be any useful information that comes to mind.

You can add descriptions to a large variety of drawings:

 

a) Drawings in our LIBRARY

You can use the Editor to adapt any drawing in our LIBRARY to any level of knowledge and personalize it for your child. For example, you can add information to suit more levels of knowledge to a drawing illustrating a cat, allowing both a 3-year-old and a 10-year old enjoy individual learning.

 

b) Drawings you have at home

Use the Editor to add descriptions to the graphics you have at home. Choose anything from tactile paintings, tactile illustrations to tactile books or tactile albums.

Because all you have to do is take their picture, you can use materials regardless of the realization technique.

 

c) Newly-created drawings

If you just finished creating a new drawing, all you have to do now is use the Editor to add the personalized descriptions.

 

3. Mapy

With Mapy, you can easily create the maps of your neighbourhood. Pick your favourite area and zoom in to get more details. It’s as easy to use as Google Maps!

 

*To create the Drawing Tool, we innovated a free software. We added several functionalities such as a library of height editable SVGs, tactile patterns and dotted lines. One of the most important new features is the background – which allows teachers and parents to copy the contour of all the lines in a photo. What is more, we integrated the EDITOR and MAP into the existing software, thus creating a complete educational solution for blind children.

 

What steps should you follow? 

1. Drawing Tool

 

a) Free drawing

1. Write the title of the drawing. You can do it in Braille as well.
2. Create shapes or draw them by hand.
3. Fill in the shapes with different patterns.
4. Change the colors of the shapes and patterns.
5. Save your drawing. (File – Save Image)

b) Clipart

1. Go to the library (star symbol).
2. Browse through the categories.
3. Add the clipart to the page.
4. Upload your own clipart (if you want).
5. Resize, position and color elements.
6. Save your drawing.

c) Background

1. Choose your background.
2. Upload any photo from your computer.
3. Adjust opacity, shape etc.
4. Select Path Tool.
5. Start to copy the contours of the lines.
6. Save your drawing.

 

 

2. Editor

a) Adding a new tactile image to the LIBRARY

1. Add a new tactile image to the LIBRARY.
2. The name and tags must be in English.
3. Enter a descriptive name for your image so you can find it with ease later in the image library.
4. Image dimensions must comply with the A4 page format.
5. Please upload only PNG files, make sure your image size is not bigger than 2MB.
6. Select tags from the drop-down, if necessary.

 

b) Adding the QR Code

1. Generate the QR code using the current URL.
2. Save the QR code as a PNG file.
3. The QR code should have 200×200 dimensions.

 

c) Adding interest areas on the tactile image

1. You can drag around an area and increase or decrease its size so it fits the interest point.
2. Please make sure your interest areas do not overlap.
3. To add a new area click on the grey space (outside of an existing area) inside the image.
4. To delete an area click on the Bin icon on the top right side of the area.
5. After you have defined all your areas of interest, click Next to add a text to each area on the next screen.

 

d) Adding info text to each area

1. Please make sure that each text contains relevant information for that area.
2. To add an info text click on the area and a text pop up will appear. After you enter the text press the Save button.
3. Make sure you enter info texts for all your areas, areas that contain text have a blue frame.
4. Please click the Finish button under the image to save the texts and complete the process.

 

e) Translating the texts

Translate the texts in English or Romanian. In the future, this section will be enriched with a high number of foreign languages.

 

3. Mapy

1. Zoom in or out to your particular location.
2. Select Map – tactile.
3. Choose small, medium or large.
4. Select the pages you want to download.
5. Press download.

 

 

How do you emboss the created image? 

All you have to do now is print the tactile graphic on embossed paper or emboss it yourself, with DIY techniques, with reduced cost. You can find out more about manual embossing techniques right here. 

 

What do you do next? 

Download the Tactile Images READER App from App Store, place the phone above the tactile graphics and enjoy limitless access to knowledge! Read more about the app here .