[Blindmath] Accessibility of Math Applications on iOS Devices and Related Observations

[Roopakshi Pathania]

Hi all,

So these days I’m busy playing with my new toy: a shiny squeaky new iPod Touch and a plethora of accessible apps that can be downloaded.
Naturally, after a few days, my interest shifted to the discovery of accessible science and Math based apps.
I downloaded a few, but they weren’t accessible enough to satisfy me. I have recently found my first fully accessible Math app for iOS devices.
It’s called Equation Genius. The app solves equations for you: it can solve quadratic and cubic equations as well as system of linear equations up to 3 unknowns. The fields are labeled with the coefficients you need to input. Once you start editing, the labels disappear, or at least they are not announced.
It is free for now.
http://itunes.apple.com/in/app/equation-genius-math-equation/id372919594?mt=8#

Besides this, the default calculator on iOS devices is completely accessible. If you turn your iPhone or iPod into the landscape mode, the regular calculator becomes a scientific calculator.

Coming to some of my gloomy reflections, experimenting with the iOS ecosystem has strengthened my belief that the future of accessibility of productive applications on Windows in particular looks quite bleak from where I stand.
The reason why I’m referring to Windows is because this is presently the main platform used in corporate environments around the world. 
The ultimate purpose of studying science or math based subjects, according to me at least, is to work in the same field in future. Unless you plan to teach, in which case, you can skip the rest of my diatribe.
All technical fields today depend on specialized software to perform particular tasks.
For a number of reasons, many of the software applications available have little to no built-in accessibility.
Software for data analysis, computer simulation and modeling, business intelligence tools, cloud-based office applications, financial accounting, report designers and generators, trading platforms, mind mapping, some of the developing environments and many other categories- are not usable right out of the box.
 Of course, there are accessible software applications as well, but those are just a handful.
Not to mention that companies quite frequently use in-house software which is rarely accessible.
There is life beyond Microsoft Office.
And even if we consider only MS applications, accessibility issues crop up especially while trying to use advance features. I can attest to that fact since I use Excel regularly.

Have a happy new year