[Blindmath] math software for college?

[Birkir Rúnar Gunnarsson]

Hello and good luck with the studies.
A few suggestions:
For web pages with math download the free MathPlayer from Design
Science (www.dessci.com).
If your teachers/profs want to give you hand outs or material in an
accessible way they can use MathType from Design Science with Word and
export the document as MathPage, then you can read it with IE and your
screen reader of vhoice (except NVDA at this point).


If you have math books endcoded in LaTeX or MathML you can also emboss
them into Nemeth using either DBT from Duxbury or TSS from ViewPlus.

For a calculator you could try the AGC (Audio Graphic Calculator) from
ViewPlus ($299 though), it is a powerful calculator, but I am
personally still learning it, just downloded it a week ago.
Excel is also powerful for numerical calculations and graphs and such,
but does not really solve equations or do calculus type stuff for you.

Finally look into using the R language for computing, especially the
command-line view. I can send you instructions but our R expert may
still respond to your post and may tell you more.

I learnt LaTeX myself to write math accessibly, it is a language, a
bit like html, for writing mathematics, but there are two other
editors you may want to look into and are optimized for blind users:
ChattyInfty from the InftyGroup and
lambda from the Lambda project.
Neither are free but both should allow you to enter and work with math
as a blind user.

I'll put all of this together in a web page soon along with user
reviews and instructions, I believe the School for the Blind in Austin
has a good math resource page, I can dig it up and send it to you in a
little bit.

I took computer science and economics myself and graduated in 2002.
My sincerest advice to you: Start now, get one of the "teach yourself
c/c++/Java/Perl in 21 days books, the programming language does not so
much matter the concepts are the same for all more or less) .. you can
get them from www.bookshare.org, get a programming environment such as
visual studio Express, SodBeans or Eclipse,  (all free) and start
practicing.
Work through one chapter a day, do the problems, if you run into
something you don't understand, sign up to the Blind Pgrogrammers
mailing list or the program-l mailing list and ask questions.
If you get the basics of programming and have tried out compilation
and debugging, on your own with some time to spare and your own book,
you will do well. You may still manage if you haven't, but it'll be
lots of sleepless ights and anxiety. I did it the wrong way, so would
like to see others do it in a more relaxed fashion *grin*.
Hope some of this turns out useful.
Thanks
-B

On 12/19/10, Haden Pike <haden.pike at gmail.com> wrote:
> Yes.  Textbooks were given to me in braille.
> Haden
>
> On 12/19/2010 1:25 AM, Sarah Jevnikar wrote:
>> Have you used Nemeth? How have you received your textbooks in the past?
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org]
>> On
>> Behalf Of Haden Pike
>> Sent: December 19, 2010 1:13 AM
>> To: Blind Math list for those interested in mathematics
>> Subject: Re: [Blindmath] math software for college?
>>
>> I'm completely blind.  I haven't used anything special in the past, just
>> the calculator on my braille note.
>> Haden
>>
>> On 12/19/2010 1:00 AM, Sarah Jevnikar wrote:
>>> Hi Haden,
>>> To help us be more helpful to you, there are some general questions for
>> you.
>>> What is your vision like? What have you used in the past for math? Once
>> the
>>> list knows these things we can direct you better.
>>> Thanks,
>>> Sarah
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org]
>> On
>>> Behalf Of Haden Pike
>>> Sent: December 19, 2010 12:49 AM
>>> To: Blindmath at nfbnet.org
>>> Subject: [Blindmath] math software for college?
>>>
>>> Hi all.
>>>
>>> In a few months, I will be starting college.  What software would people
>>> recommend to use to help with math classes, particularly calculus?  My
>>> major will be computer science.
>>>
>>> Thanks for any help.
>>> Haden
>>>
>>>
>>>
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