[Blindmath] Mathematical document accessibility

[Blind Collegian]

Hello,
I am not using any of the other Braille math systems at this point, nor am I 
using Nemeth Cod presently. Instead, I am producing my math work using a 
standard QWERTY keyboard on the Braille Note or my laptop, then I would 
print the unseemly work and hand it over to the instructor. I could also 
e-mail the work in RTF or .doc formats, and I receive corrections or 
comments back via e-mail. My instructor so far has no problem with this.
I admit the above approach is time consuming. Also, my keyboard is limited 
in the number of math symbols I can use, making it difficult for me and 
forcing me to come up with my own symbols to work around this limitation. If 
I produce my work in nemeth Code and try to translate the work into readable 
print, the teacher would complain that some symbols don't make sense and 
cannot be easily deciphered. With LaTeX, very few teachers use it, and there 
is steep learning curve involved. And if I try to print out my Nemeth Code 
produced math directly from the BrailleNote, they make no sense to the naked 
eye.
Lack of simple and efficient ways to do math that would not force the 
student to rely on sighted help or deal with tedious translation from Nemeth 
to standard print math has become a pain in the neck for me. I thought that 
with our impressive array of technologies, inaccessible math should have 
been a thing of the past.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Susan Jolly" <easjolly at ix.netcom.com>
To: <blindmath at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Friday, March 13, 2009 11:38 AM
Subject: Re: [Blindmath] Mathematical document accessibility


> This question is for those of you who use a braille math system other than
> Nemeth.  What is your reason for continuing to use BAUK or whatever 
> instead
> of switching to Nemeth?  My understanding from those on this list who
> started with another braille math and then switched to Nemeth is that they
> much prefer Nemeth.
>
> MathML, LaTeX, other TeX flavors, and the various braille maths are just a
> few of the many plain text math markup or math entry systems that have 
> been
> around for years.  The fact that MathML is still being updated is one
> indicator of the difficulties of devising a "perfect" system.  Moreover,
> automatically converting between almost any pair of systems is difficult
> because they "think" differently and also because most systems are
> incomplete but in different ways.
>
> SusanJ
>
>
>
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