[Blindmath] Mathematical document accessibility

[Michael Whapples]

My reasoning is:
* At school I was taught BAUK maths
* When I moved on from school to university I did not realise BAUK maths 
would be so hard to get from software translators
* When I started at university I didn't want the extra load of learning 
a new Braille system, I really wanted to get on and learn the physics 
like everyone else
* I didn't feel the Braille code I was using was the problem, I feel its 
more the availability of materials in the Braille code which is the problem
* No obvious advantage has ever got my attention of making a switch to 
Nemeth
* Some of the problems I encountered with the university's Braille 
transcription service made me feel that asking them for something 
"non-standard for the country" would make matters worse (problems ranged 
from a regular delay, at times the delay got absolutely unacceptable, 
sometimes they failed to use the right code anyway, pages might be 
missing (particularly at those times where duxbury would stop 
translating due to certain LaTeX content), etc (no proof reading was 
ever done, not even on a sample of output) and then consider that there 
was another Braille user (BAUK) in some of my modules, I can just 
imagine Nemeth notes going to the wrong student, sometimes Nemeth not 
being used because the special request doesn't make it through, because 
Nemeth would be a different code to the other Braille it would be done 
separate (probably later), etc)

So my feeling is (this not being a suggestion for Nemeth) until Nemeth 
is taken up as the official code in a country then these other codes 
will still be taught and while people are being taught these codes then 
people will decide to continue with them unless they have a compelling 
reason to want to learn another code.

On the topic of learning another code, the one which has had my 
atttention and nearly was the way I went is the dots plus system. John 
if you want my reasons for not taking up dots plus, one big reason is 
the lack of any way to work with it on a refreshable tactile computer 
display system (it always requires producing a paper copy). With Braille 
(eg. BAUK maths) I was able to read my notes electronically in the form 
I like on my Braille display. Another reason is also that I believe dots 
plus is tied to word (equation editor) and is equation editor 
accessible? IE. would I be able to produce notes for myself which I 
could then output to dots plus for later reading?

Michael Whapples
On 13/03/09 18:38, Susan Jolly wrote:
> 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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