... | ... | @@ -66,7 +66,7 @@ Design options |
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The following example shows simple different line styles that are realized with dots on an equidistant grid. The lines differ in thickness from 1 to 3 dots (1.5mm - 6.5mm) and each thickness is depicted as solid, dotted and dashed variant.
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![Braille line styles](bar_charts/figures/lines.PNG)
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![Braille line styles](uploads/f22274242c542a19e6f52956e8c1c10d/lines.PNG)
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Taking the low resolution of the grid into account, it becomes clear, that thicker lines become impracticable very soon. For a thickness of 3 dots, a single line dash already has a length of 1.4 centimetres in this example and the line consumes a lot of space. For our specific use case, styling options for lines of the smallest thickness (1 dot) are interesting, they can especially be used to enhance textures.
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... | ... | @@ -74,7 +74,7 @@ Taking the low resolution of the grid into account, it becomes clear, that thick |
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A set of basic recommended textures for tactile graphics (Prescher, D. and Bornschein, J., 2016) has been applied to the dot grid in the example below, by filling a 10 by 10 square (2.4cm sidelength) with the respective texture. The exact pattern spacings had to be manipulated partially, because of the lower resolution. From left to right, the depicted textures in the upper row are called 'full_pattern', 'horizontal_line', 'vertical_line', 'diagonal_line1' and 'diagonal_line2'. The lower row shows the textures 'dashed_lines', 'grid_pattern', 'dotted_pattern', 'stair_pattern' and an empty box for comparison.
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![Braille textures](bar_charts/figures/textures.PNG)
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![Braille textures](uploads/34f08c85d60fec2ab8717b1fb0252106/textures.PNG)
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The original purpose of the textures - to create distinguishable areas on a tactile graphic - is of course relevant for this specific use case, but it has to be extended further. Since it is hard to add reqular gridlines to a braille diagram, the texture should also be suitable to give an implicit scale, so that the dimensions of a tactile object can also be determined if the object is far from the nearest axis. (For example in a bar chart.)
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... | ... | @@ -103,7 +103,7 @@ For categories which are distinguished by an axis label there is no need for dis |
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The uniform texture is basically a simple line pattern, either horizontal or vertical depending on the axis rotation, with intermediate dotted lines. The following depiction shows an example bar with the normal 'vertical_line' texture on top of a bar with the modified texture.
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![Bar chart prototype](bar_charts/figures/uniform_bar_texture.png)
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![uniform_bar_texture](uploads/7dab95c50477937733885cfcc43dfebc/uniform_bar_texture.png)
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The uniform texture can be applied as long as the spacing between the axis divisions (tickmarks) is an even number of (at least 4) dots. The texture is applied by aligning the solid lines with the tickmarks. In this way, the texture allows to distinguish between whole and half unit steps.
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... | ... | @@ -113,7 +113,7 @@ The uniform texture can be applied as long as the spacing between the axis divis |
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All depictions of the bar chart prototypes are generated using a software called 'QuickTac' by Duxbury Systems.
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![Bar chart prototype](bar_charts/figures/bar_charts_landscape.png)
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![bar_charts_landscape](/uploads/1f22e924a5967161e15cf44fe2c7f68d/bar_charts_landscape.png)
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The given prototype shows a bar chart with uniform textured horizontal bars on an A4 sheet in landscape orientation. Of course, many other chart arrangements with varying advantages and disadvantages are possible.
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