Teaching and tools · 2025
Tools for a Radical Accessibility Studio
As a teaching assistant, I built three small tools so a low-vision student could read, label and design alongside everyone else in the studio.
- Location
- University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, School of Architecture
- Role
- Sophomore Studio Special Teaching Assistant
- Status
- Studio
In fall 2025 I was the teaching assistant for a sophomore studio on radical accessibility. One student is low-vision and works with the JAWS screen reader. Where the usual studio tools left that student out, I built small tools to close the gap.
Each one started from something the student couldn't do yet, went into studio as a rough first version, and changed after we watched it being used.
01 Accessible PDF converter
Course readings often arrived as scans, which a screen reader can't read. I wrote a small program that turns a scan into a document with real headings and lists, so the student could move through it by keyboard like any other reader.
02 Braille in Grasshopper
Our models needed labels that could be found by touch. I made a Grasshopper tool that sets braille and raised letters on any surface, ready to 3D-print. The first plates were too shallow to feel, so we raised the dots and printed again. With them, the student could read the labels across the whole Ensemble model throughout the design phase.
Type something and watch it turn into braille, drawn to scale.
Loading the word list.
Loading the word list.
Drawn to scale; the bar is 10 mm. Words in italics are spelled letter by letter.
Unicode braille, to select and copy
(nothing yet)
How this works, and the common contractions
UEB Grade 2 contracts words: whole words and parts of words take fewer cells than their letters (“mother” is two cells, “braille” is three). Which contractions apply depends on the parts of the word, so this page does not work them out letter by letter. It looks each word up in a list of the 20,000 commonest English words, with some for this project, translated once with Liblouis, the UEB engine and table that the 6-key app uses. Capital signs, numbers, punctuation, hyphens and apostrophes are added by rules, and the result was checked against Liblouis on thousands of sentences.
A word that is not in the list is spelled letter by letter. That is valid braille, but longer than UEB would write it, so those words are shown in italics. Symbols such as # & @ and accented letters have no cell here and are left out.
The common contractions
These are a reference, not what the page uses. UEB has many more, such as short forms (“about”, “because”) and parts of words (“tion”, “ment”).
Letters (26)
- a dots 1
- b dots 1 2
- c dots 1 4
- d dots 1 4 5
- e dots 1 5
- f dots 1 2 4
- g dots 1 2 4 5
- h dots 1 2 5
- i dots 2 4
- j dots 2 4 5
- k dots 1 3
- l dots 1 2 3
- m dots 1 3 4
- n dots 1 3 4 5
- o dots 1 3 5
- p dots 1 2 3 4
- q dots 1 2 3 4 5
- r dots 1 2 3 5
- s dots 2 3 4
- t dots 2 3 4 5
- u dots 1 3 6
- v dots 1 2 3 6
- w dots 2 4 5 6
- x dots 1 3 4 6
- y dots 1 3 4 5 6
- z dots 1 3 5 6
Whole-word signs (28)
- and dots 1 2 3 4 6
- for dots 1 2 3 4 5 6
- of dots 1 2 3 5 6
- the dots 2 3 4 6
- with dots 2 3 4 5 6
- but dots 1 2
- can dots 1 4
- do dots 1 4 5
- every dots 1 5
- from dots 1 2 4
- go dots 1 2 4 5
- have dots 1 2 5
- just dots 2 4 5
- knowledge dots 1 3
- like dots 1 2 3
- more dots 1 3 4
- not dots 1 3 4 5
- people dots 1 2 3 4
- quite dots 1 2 3 4 5
- rather dots 1 2 3 5
- so dots 2 3 4
- that dots 2 3 4 5
- us dots 1 3 6
- very dots 1 2 3 6
- will dots 2 4 5 6
- it dots 1 3 4 6
- you dots 1 3 4 5 6
- as dots 1 3 5 6
Letter groups (22)
Used anywhere in a word
- ch dots 1 6
- gh dots 1 2 6
- sh dots 1 4 6
- th dots 1 4 5 6
- wh dots 1 5 6
- ed dots 1 2 4 6
- er dots 1 2 4 5 6
- ou dots 1 2 5 6
- ow dots 2 4 6
- st dots 3 4
- ar dots 3 4 5
- en dots 2 6
- in dots 3 5
Used anywhere in a word except at its start
- ing dots 3 4 6
Used only in the middle of a word, with a letter before and after
- ea dots 2
- bb dots 2 3
- cc dots 2 5
- ff dots 2 3 5
- gg dots 2 3 5 6
Used only at the start of a word
- dis dots 2 5 6
Used only at the start of a longer word
- be dots 2 3
- con dots 2 5
03 Print or six-key to braille
Braille on a drawing has to arrive as text. This small app lets you type braille on six keys, the way a brailler does, or translate it from English, then paste it anywhere. It made the braille labels on the final Ensemble board.
Like a brailler: hold some of F D S J K L together, let go, and one braille cell is added. Try F D S J L.
Click or tab to a key, then press F D S J K L on your keyboard. Or tap keys here and press Add cell.
Listening: hold any of F D S J K L, then let go of all of them.
Cells so far
None yet.
Reads as(generate a cell above with the buttons)
As braille text, to select and copy(waiting for cells)
In the studio
I also drew swell-paper versions of studio drawings. Printed on swell paper and run through a PIAF heater, everything black rises off the page, so the student could read the sheets by touch: the braille titles, the linework, the textures, and the difference between line weights and line types.
Plan · 1 of 3
