>> Chris Tabb: I'm here to talk about Tactile Town and this is a product from APH and this is something that is a multiuse tool.  And can be used with students who are just beginning with their conceptual development as well as those who are much more advanced.  And really it's just limited in how you decide to present the information and I'll go through a little bit to start with on what you'll receive.  Right now the box is empty just for display purpose here.  But it's a -- kind of a plastic, cardboard somehow type of box and it's a nice large box.  It comes with a tri-fold board so that you have a large presentation area.  It's just setup on an angle right now for the presentation in the video.  And within the box, when you receive it, you'll have a lot of pieces in Ziploc bags.  Many of them will not have Velcro on them yet.  So you'll be tasked with applying small circles of Velcro to the back of the items that they stay on the board.  So you'd probably want to take care of that before just arriving to meet with the student for the first time.  You'll receive a book that has picture examples of how to arrange very simple patterns [Book start] of different north, south, east, and west or toward the back [Book end] [Book start] you get into more complex things with downtown grid views or roundabouts.  [Book end] You will get names of places [Display start] such as the theater, fire station, names of streets, directions with directional corners, things that you might find inside like you could use fountain for water fountain or snacks for a snack area.  Names of people so that you could travel to Sam's [Display end] house or Mia's house, things like that.  There will be a kind of a plastic organizer with different bins that will have- you can put the grass pieces there.  There's train tracks.  There's even some things [Display start] for representing water areas.  If you want to put maybe a park with a lake in the middle.  Different shapes, you have rectangular shapes.  You have circles.  There's triangles.  Longer grass strips that could be used for a parking lawn or walkways [Display end] along a green belt.  Different shaped buildings [Display start] and there are several that are the same shape but each has a different texture so that you and the student would be able to discern even though the size and the color of the building might be the same.
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Some may have a bumpy texture.  Some may have a smooth texture.  [Display end] Larger buildings that could represent something like a Wal-Mart or a school building.  And as well there are different signage.  There's a stop sign, a yield sign.  They include the Braille.  There are small traffic lights with the yellow, red, and green lights.  Vehicles that can be used.  They also have different textures so that if you had one that was heading north or south and one that was heading east or west you could use that to discern.  If you want the car to slide, I'm going to recommend that you not put the Velcro on because once it's stuck, they stick pretty well.  So you can have a couple of cars that do not have Velcro and some that do.  There are also several people that are included and they have features on one side so that you can use that for laterality and directionality because it would make an obvious representation [Display start] for the student of which way that character was facing so that there's a front and a back to the character as well as a right and a left.  [Display end] I've also combined that personally with some things that I was using before Tactile Town was released in anticipation of Tactile Town.  So I've taken some of the Wheatley kit and used that to hold some of the other pieces that can be purchased separately through APH.  So there's different textures that you would use for your street markings, sidewalks, and all those things can be used to give whatever you're attempting to represent on the board.  So we'll start with something that's a little more simple.  If you're just working with a student and you want to talk about basic lines.  So that you're just beginning parallel and perpendicular.  You can start with two lines on the board and talk about parallel.  You can talk then about having streets across another one for perpendicular or you can have streets that are at a bit of an angle to begin those more involved conversations about the street geometry.  If you want to actually make an intersection, basically it helps to play a little bit on your own or with a student to think about well how am I going to design that so the student can understand the geometry of the intersection.
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Sorry I haven't practiced doing this on an angle before.  So hopefully it'll all come out right.
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And depending on the student's cognitive level, it may need to be more or less complex.
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[ Background sounds ]
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But basically you have your intersection and if you want to, you can add certain features, arrows.  They have different surfaces for sidewalks.  Some have the striped lines.  You can use things like a- depending on how big we make that, a crosswalk to go all the way across.  You can box in the intersection but starting with something a little more simple, you may want to just start with the concept of a lane.  And talk to the student about why there are certain stripings on the road.
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[ Velcro attaching to board ]
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And eventually you can start to build your intersection and I'm going to place some cars on and hope that everything stays on with the Velcro.
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[ Velcro attaching to board ]
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But you can have your cars that reach the intersection.
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[ Getting the cars out of the bin ]
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And your traffic heading from a perpendicular direction.
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[ Getting the cars out of the bin ]
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And you could place the student at one point on the intersection.  Sorry for the angle.  And talk to the student about well if you're going to cross, let's just say that we're going to use a marker to represent north.  If the student's going to cross to the north, which traffic would they want to use for their near-lane parallel?  And you could approximate the surge.  You could also talk with them about the perpendicular traffic crossing in front of their line of travel.  As the students develop beyond that, you can start to add things like a right hand turn lane where you have the slip lane and put the triangular shaped pedestrian island in the intersection that they would have to navigate through to give them a clear understanding of what they're picking up in their auditory environment when they're analyzing the intersection. [Demo begins]
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>> Tabb: The street portion of West 45th that's directly in front of you on your side of the intersection has an additional lane.  Can you find that with your hand?  It's going to be the part closest to you.
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[ Background sounds ]
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>> Davieon: Right here.
>> Tabb: Okay.  And so that's a right hand turn lane or sometimes they call it a slip lane.  And the little patch of grass or green area that's just to the left of it, yeah.  There's a little- that would be you or a pedestrian and that's what sometimes traffic engineers call it a pork chop island because it's usually shaped like a pork chop although ours is shaped like a triangle.  And the reason that they have that is they put that special lane in to allow the cars to turn right without necessarily having to stop at the light.  And one of the differences that you'll have as a pedestrian using your nonvisual skills is that it will sound different.  In other words, we're used to having our parallel surge go right next to us.  And in this case, you're going to have your right hand turning cars going in front of you going around onto Burnet and it wouldn't have that same effect.  You'd have to discern between the traffic that would be just to your left driving on West 45th Street from those that were using that right hand turn lane.  Does that make sense?  
>> Davieon: Uh-huh.
>> Tabb: Okay.  Have him cross the street.  That would be almost like going over to Upper Crust or where we pick up the Number 3 going south.  So you're going to cross again.
>> Davieon: This way?
>> Tabb: Yep.  And then have him face toward you.  Okay.  Now from this direction, what do you think you'd hear?
>> Davieon: The street.
>> Tabb: Okay.  And which would be your near side parallel traffic that you would use for your surge if you did not have an audible pedestrian signal?
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[ student searching on board ]
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>> Daveion: This.
>> Tabb: Correct. Okay.  So depending on how much traffic volume there are in the other lanes, it may be difficult to hear the cars going straight compared to the cars turning right but knowing ahead of time that those conditions can exist, it would make sense why they seem to be streaming through while the other cars seem to be idling.  Because that right hand turn lane does not have a stop sign.  All they're doing is yielding for the other traffic.  Okay? [Demo end]