Swell

Comparison of a failed and a successful swelling for the blind

Paper (also swell and source paper) is a special paper for the simple and inexpensive production of tactile graphics mostly for the blind. On a carrier paper is a thermoplastic PVC layer. Edit usagetext

Paper can be painted or printed using standard printers. After painting or printing, the paper is briefly illuminated in a special device, the blackened areas heating up. They swell permanently and can be felt afterwards. The strength of the expression can be controlled to a certain extent by blackening, temperature and duration of the heating. This corresponds to the setting of the contrast on printers. This process creates a tactile graphic within a few seconds. Graphics, sketches, diagrams and road maps can also be made accessible to the blind.

Another possibility of using is the writing or drawing with a heat emitting pen, with the further processing step of the illumination being omitted.

However, the possibilities are not comparable with the visual representation. The haptic graphic corresponds most closely to a pure black and white image without gray values. Only very simple graphics can be translated 1: 1 so that the representation can also be understood by blind people. Alternatively, the scale of the representation must be greatly increased. This is due, on the one hand, to the different functioning of the visual and tactile sense, as well as to the different mental representations of the environment in the eyes, the blind and the obese.

For everyday use, this process is not always appropriate because of the effort to produce or find suitable graphics, high material costs (about 50 cents per A4 page) and the creation time per page. Its use is still restricted to isolated applications, such as the reproduction of teaching materials for blind students and students. In contrast to the duplication of tactile maps by manual production of a template for deep drawing, however, the process is simple and very inexpensive.

Because the swell paper can be printed in color, graphics can also be generated that can be understood by both blind and non-blind persons, thus facilitating communication between the blind and the visual, or with strong contrasts, the perception of the visually impaired .

Also some artists have discovered the swell paper as a medium.

The swell paper and the swell copiers (fuser) necessary for swelling are available in the convenience store

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