ATLAS TACTIL DE LATINO AMERICA (TACTILE ATLAS OF LATIN AMERICA) Topic 21: Maps for Handicapped People

摘要

This paper describes the production of Atlas Tactil de Latino America (Tactile Atlas of Latin America) that which was published in Ottawa, Canada in April 2000 (Taylor, 2000a). The Atlas was produced as part of the Digital Mapping and Geographic Information Systems Pilot Project, more informally called the Cybercartography for the Americas Project, funded by the Inter-American Development Bank and the Governments of Brazil, Mexico and Canada and administered by the Pan American Institute of Geography and History in Mexico City (Reyes, 2000; Taylor, 2000). The Atlas was produced using the Tactile Graphic Designer Series (TGD) developed by Don Parkes and Richard Dear of New South Wales, Australia (Parkes and Dear, 2001). This system allows the production of audio-tactile maps. The Atlas was produced by a team of individuals, with different national components being produced for Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Peru. In each of these countries there was a national coordinator and a team of individuals involved in the production. An important element in the project was local capacity building and a one-week training workshop was held in Ottawa, Canada to introduce participants to TGD. This workshop was held in cooperation with the Canadian National Institute for the Blind. The instruction was given by the team responsible for the development of the TGD System. In addition to the Latin American participants a number of Canadians, including three blind people, attended the workshop. Of special interest was the involvement of a blind instructor familiar with the TGD System as part of the training team. Prior to the workshop each participating country was sent the TGD software and hardware. The objective was to have a common platform in each nation to facilitate the overall production of the atlas and to act as an ongoing resource for future work on mapping for the blind. Each country was asked to produce a series of maps and text on flexi-paper in either black and white or colour. These were sent to Ottawa for collation and production of the Atlas. This paper discusses the technical, administrative and bureaucratic problems in the production of the Atlas. Although there were some problems with the technology the major problems were of a non-technical nature.