New Education Program for Visually Impaired Students.

By running his hands across a scientific graph, Cary Supalo (blind Purdue University student) is able to take in by touch what others take for granted -- the full-color diagrams and charts that illustrate science textbooks. In the past, as the he read the Braille on his textbooks, the text was accompanied with a simple tag: illustration omitted. But for the last two years, Purdue has provided more than text. A program called Tactile Access to Education for Visually Impaired Students (TAEVIS) has generated thousands of scientific diagrams with puffy, raised lines and Braille labels to aid blind students. Now blind students at other colleges can also 'view' the diagrams, thanks to an Internet program that allows other schools to replicate the drawings. Eventually, a special Braille code was developed that eased the translation of mathematical and scientific information. Textbooks could be translated, but not the illustrations. Until two years ago, when a special type of paper hit the market, backed with plastic and coated with a heat-sensitive chemical. A drawing is printed onto the paper in black ink, then the paper is run through a heater, what people in the TAEVIS office call 'the toaster.' The heat causes the black ink lines, Braille letters and markings to bubble up, leaving a raised image. However, providing such a service is time consuming and costly. Purdue_s TAEVIS office is bustling with nine full-time employees and five part-time students working with 20 computers and a $40,000 Braille embosser. That is where TAEVIS Online comes in. The Web site costs less than $100 to subscribe to and allows schools anywhere to download the more than 2,500 images TAEVIS has in its library. Each download costs about $2. The special paper is about 70 cents a sheet and the .'toaster' costs less than $1,500.