[Blindmath] accessible math websites

Mon Mar 16 11:14:10 UTC 2009

Of course, 100% accessible is probably a slight exaggeration, but I 
certainly don't know of any equivalent notation systems that provide the 
level of access for the blind that LaTeX does. Yes, you may need sighted 
assistance to confirm the way LaTeX compiled at some point, but don't 
you need sighted asistance to tell you the WYSYWYG editor you're using 
did what you want? If you know of some way of editing documents without 
vision that allows you to check all potential facets of a document for 
correctness without any sort of sighted confirmation, lead me to it! *smile*

Jared

On 3/16/2009 6:38 AM, Michael Whapples wrote:
> "LaTeX is the only 100% accessible typesetting tool for the blind"
> Really? I feel that needs questioning from both directions. I am sure 
> there probably are other tools just as accessible as LaTeX but LaTeX 
> is by far the most popular one which is useable. The other side is 
> whether LaTeX is really 100% accessible, well the source code might be 
> but the compiled document isn't. I remember when I wanted to achieve a 
> very specific formatting I found it hard to get an output where I 
> could independently confirm the output was actually formatted as I 
> needed. As I remember I had to resort to asking a sighted person to 
> check the formatting for me and it took a few attempts at the source 
> code to actually get exactly what I needed. May be these cases are 
> rare, but so long as a single case exists then a 100% accessibility 
> claim is an exageration.
>
> Michael Whapples
> On 16/03/09 06:34, P. R. Stanley wrote:
>> I wasn't refering to you personally. It was you as in general.
>> as I have already explained, wysewyg was invented to serve people 
>> like you i.e. the sighted. LaTeX by some fortunate accident happened 
>> to be just the thing we blind folks need in order to ensure that the 
>> document looks as presentable as possible.
>> Difficult or not LaTeX is the only 100% accessible typesetting tool 
>> for the blind and you cannot and will not be able to change and I'm 
>> not going to sit quietly while some half baked idea gets promoted 
>> solely as to make money for a handful of opportunists!
>> and before you get excited, no, I am not alluding to you.
>> Paul
>>
>>
>> At 05:33 16/03/2009, you wrote:
>>> FYI: I know TeX reasonably well. I wrote my thesis in it and many 
>>> papers
>>> in it, but I don't use it anymore (mostly) because I hate the write,
>>> "compile", fix, "compile", fix, etc., loop that WYSIWYG eliminates. 
>>> I do
>>> advocate that people going into math or physics and a few other 
>>> sciences
>>> learn it because many of their colleagues will use it and you will 
>>> see it
>>> and need to correspond with them using it. Knowing it doesn't mean 
>>> using it
>>> though.
>>>
>>> The point about actuarial notation is that it is not as 
>>> straightforward in
>>> TeX as a fraction or superscript is. As you can see, the "angle" 
>>> part is
>>> split among the overline and the |, and those constructs break apart 
>>> the
>>> operands in a semantically unnatural way, making comprehension 
>>> harder. If
>>> one were using real TeX, you'd write a macro to do this and it would 
>>> be more
>>> understandable, but the TeX variant used by Wikipedia (texvc) and 
>>> most other
>>> web-oriented systems is not extensible and only support a very limited
>>> subset of TeX.
>>>
>>>
>>> Neil Soiffer
>>> Senior Scientist
>>> Design Science, Inc.
>>> www.dessci.com
>>> ~ Makers of MathType, MathFlow, MathPlayer, MathDaisy, WebEQ, Equation
>>> Editor ~
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sun, Mar 15, 2009 at 6:38 PM, P. R. Stanley 
>>> <prstanley at ntlworld.com>wrote:
>>>
>>> > I'm sorry, Neil, what is the point you're making? You may not 
>>> understand it
>>> > straightaway but with a little bit of work and patience you can 
>>> get to know
>>> > the system. The benenfits of LaTeX which have been highlighted on 
>>> this list
>>> > on many occasions surely must make it worth the effort.
>>> > Cheers
>>> > Paul
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > At 00:31 16/03/2009, you wrote:
>>> >
>>> >> If you are willing to deal with TeX, take a look at Wikipedia. 
>>> The images
>>> >> use TeX as the alt text. Unfortunately, TeX is pretty cryptic for
>>> >> actuarial
>>> >> notations. For example, "a angle n i" is represented as
>>> >> "a_{\overline{n|}i}" Take a look at
>>> >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actuarial_notation
>>> >> and see if it is understandable.
>>> >>
>>> >> For more basic concepts (such as Algebra I and II), there are 
>>> sites such
>>> >> as
>>> >> www.onemathematicalcat.org that use MathML and are accessible via
>>> >> MathPlayer
>>> >> with JAWS.
>>> >>
>>> >> Neil Soiffer
>>> >> Senior Scientist
>>> >> Design Science, Inc.
>>> >> www.dessci.com
>>> >> ~ Makers of MathType, MathFlow, MathPlayer, MathDaisy, WebEQ, 
>>> Equation
>>> >> Editor ~
>>> >>
>>> >>
>>> >>
>>> >>
>>> >> On Sun, Mar 15, 2009 at 1:39 PM, <sarah.jevnikar at utoronto.ca> wrote:
>>> >>
>>> >> > Hi all,
>>> >> > Every so often, I find my math text inadequately explains a 
>>> topic, and
>>> >> so I
>>> >> > wish to look it up online. However I find many math websites have
>>> >> equations
>>> >> > as images that JAWS won't read. Are there any sites you know of 
>>> which
>>> >> > explain mathematical concepts that are JAWS-friendly?
>>> >> > Thank you for your help,
>>> >> > Sarah Jevnikar
>>> >> >
>>> >> >
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>
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