[Blindmath] Math editing and conversion

[Susan Jolly]

I'm very impressed with the ingenuity being used by list members.

I know that this is an international list but still feel the need to repeat
for US students that it is illegal for your institution of higher learning
to force you to make these accommodations on your own. 

To quote an expert in the US law in this area: "A student does not have to
produce responses in a form the professor can read so long as the means the
student uses is considered standard and can be rendered into standard
written form by any person trained to use that method."  In other words, it
is perfectly legal to make a graph by sticking WikiStix on a tactile graph
with braille labels and leave it to the college to get it interpreted by a
trained person.  (If you choose to be that trained person, they should at
least pay you as much as they pay other student help.)

I do understand that braille-using students want to be independent.
However, the main goal of college courses is to learn the subject matter.
If you are spending anything more that a small fraction of your valuable
time doing things that don't contribute to learning the course material,
something is wrong. This is especially important in a mathematics course as
there is a shortage of people who understand mathematics. Moreover, you may
well be making it harder for the next student.

SusanJ