Marco Schuffelen: On Editing Grapics for The Blind, Ch. 11, Biology

11. BIOLOGY

Like in maps, it's most important to have good titles, and we should also help the reader in recognizing and locating the subject by identifying most or all of the items in the drawing, and naming its surroundings.

Identifying might be done by copying the item, or one of its kind in your key. Also remember the clearing of a shaft to the sides of an arrow as described in the General chapter.
Keep in mind that an outline is not enough to indicate an area: it has to be hatched too.

A biology picture often has many small items, like cells. These items are generally of a few kinds, but differentiation within a type might be considerable: to a sighted reader this will not pose a problem, but to a blind reader the individual differences will loom large, and I think he will not recognize the types but just discern a lot of different, individual items. So I will draw all cells of one kind in exactly the same manner (which is very easily done in computer-aided draughting, of course). To the sighted this formalized picture may look rather funny, but it will greatly help our readers understand. As I've said before, this kind of editing aks for some knowledge and understanding of the subject matter in hand.

Realistic or Formalized?

realistic picture (ca 80K)

formalized picture (ca 80K)

You may have seen these biology drawings in preceding chapters:

Two stomach drawings look alright at first glance, but the second one will be much clearer to the blind reader.

wrong (ca 65K)

right (ca 70K)

No Threedimensional Drawings (Tree Trunk fanned out)

Inkprint (ca 20K)

Faithful Copy (ca 70K)

Good (ca 65K)

Better (ca 80K)