Nuoran Chen, Yilin Niu and Siming Jin · CLIENT: Nuoran Chen
Tactilelink is a tactile graphic education system for blind and visually impaired students. Traditional hand over hand instruction limits student independence and depends on a scarce number of specialist teachers. Tactilelink combines a 3D printed tablet frame, raised line graphics of circuit diagrams and cross platform software. Sonification guides each student to a target component, as the pitch and intensity of the sound change with finger distance. Instructors can follow several students at once and prepare audio annotations for independent review after class.
Press Kit
- Unique Properties
- Tactilelink is an affordable tactile graphic education system for blind and visually impaired students. Traditional hand-over-hand instruction limits students' independence and strains an already scarce specialist workforce. SoundPath lets a single instructor guide multiple students at once through sonification and voiceover annotations, making tactile graphic learning accessible, scalable, and independent.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- The physical components include a 3D-printed tablet frame (290 × 226 × 7 mm) and several tactile graphics of Arduino diagrams (279.4 × 215.9 mm). The digital component is cross-platform software that works as both a tablet app and a desktop web app, creating a flexible teaching system.
- Tags
- Accessibility, Tactile graphic, Education system, Inclusive education, Blind Arduino
- Production Technology
- Tactilelink is built with simplicity, affordability, and accessibility in mind. For student’s system, it combines 3D-printed tablet frames with software optimized for common educational tablets, ensuring easy setup and scalability. It uses sonification to guide students in exploring and learning raised-line graphics. For instructor’s system, it’s an one-step, AI empowered software help they instruct multiple students easily, reducing their workload, expanding the educational capacity to more underserved blind students.
- Design Challenge
- The hardest part was shifting from designer to facilitator. Co-design challenged us to suspend our assumptions, especially as sighted designers. We wrongly assumed blind users would prefer vibration cues over sound. In reality, sonification was less fatiguing and more effective. This required overcoming internal bias, embracing user knowledge, and adapting to insights often overlooked due to our own perspective.
- Project Duration
- This project started in August 2024 and finished in December 2024.
- Operation Flow
- During class, the instructor taps a selected component on the tactile graphic for students to explore. Students navigate to the component following sonification guidance: the pitch and intensity of the sound shift based on how close their finger is to the target. Teacher can observes their progress on their interface to provide real-time support. After class, teachers could use the software to create detailed audio annotation and design the component-learning sequence, publishing it to student’s device. Students could review the knowledge independently without teacher’s presence by following the sonification guidance.
- Research
- This research is user-centered design. Our goal was to create an affordable system for teaching tactile graphics to visually impaired students. We observed Blind Arduino sessions and collaborated with the East Bay Center for the Blind, then used co-design workshops, Wizard of Oz prototyping, and usability testing with teachers and students. Results showed sonification on existing hardware best supported group learning, offering insights that impact education, accessibility, and inclusive design.
- Inspiration
- The idea came from observing an Arduino class at the East Bay Center for the Blind, where one instructor had to physically guide each student's hands through circuit diagrams one by one. With nearly 5,000 specialist teachers short across the U.S., this one-on-one model is unsustainable. Inspired by sonification, we use continuous pitch changes to guide students to target components independently, enabling one teacher to instruct multiple students simultaneously, in person or remotely.
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