[Blindmath] Questions about complex formulas, tagging PDFs, and users' expectations

[joseph.dalaker at census.gov]

Good evening

I'm a statistician at the U.S. Census Bureau.  My work group has some
statistical papers with lots of complex formulas (with Greek letters,
indexed variables, letters with circumflex marks, subscripts and
superscripts, etc.) that we want to publish on the web, and also ensure
that the formulas can be read with a screen reader.  Everyone in my work
group (including myself) is sighted.

We traditionally have put up papers as PDFs, but I haven't had much luck
getting Adobe to recognize how to read these formulas out loud.

I have 2 questions about what to do next -- the first is about users'
expectations, the second is technical.

1)  If we're stuck tagging the formulas by hand as figures, does the blind
community have a commonly-held standard that is expected for reading
complex formulas aloud?
      I found this reprint of an article by Abraham Nemeth that describes a
protocol for reading formulas aloud.
http://people.rit.edu/easi/easisem/talkmath.htm

      That Dr. Nemeth's system looked clear and elegant to me, coupled with
the fact that Nemeth code is also used in Braille for math, makes it sound
plausible to me like the above protocol was likely to be "the" standard
protocol that the blind community would expect for math formulas, but I
want to check that assumption.  I heard of an organization that reads and
records textbooks, that I'm pretty sure does not use the above protocol
verbatim.

      Is there a "right" way to read formulas?

2) Following on the heels of 1), if we were to find software that could tag
complex math formulas automatically, are there software packages that you
think provide good results and are easy to use?

      Or failing that, are there software features that you would recommend
that we look for?   And what websites do a good job of tagging complex
formulas?

Thanks for any input you can provide.

--Joe


Joseph Dalaker
Statistician

Government Organization and Special Programs Branch
Governments Division
U.S. Census Bureau