[Blindmath] Statistics

[John Gardner]

Hello Peter/Tony.  well I do not know if your book is available in 
accessible form, but it is pretty unlikely since there are extremely few 
high level science texts that are.  However, unlike "a few years ago", 
it is now possible to create accessible copies relatively quickly and 
inexpensively that are better in most respects to what is available by 
old methods.  So I don't understand the comment about needing to 
reformat the PDF's.

Scientific text can be converted pretty easily by using the Infty Reader 
OCR software available from the Japanese Infty group:
http://www.inftyproject.org/
This application does an excellent job of OCR'ing text and math 
equations.  It can export as XHTML which is readable by anybody 
including by a blind student using Internet Explorer with the MathPlayer 
plug-in.  The math equations are spoken by a screen reader, and many 
blind people find it far easier to have equations in braille.  Which is 
not available from IE because of screen reader limitations.  However the 
XHTML can be converted to braille by the free liblouisxml application 
that you can find by Googling.  So the Infty software leads to either 
audio or braille, whichever the blind student finds most preferable.

If the images are important (and they are of course), one can convert 
them to "audio-accessible" form using the ViewPlus IVEO Creator Pro 
software.  The blind student reads the SVG images made by IVEO using a 
tactile copy and a touchpad.  Oregon State has the ViewPlus embosser 
needed to make tactile copy already.  FYI, Viewplus is a spinoff from 
Oregon State University.

Another FYI is that the emerging standard library for such books, once 
converted, is Bookshare.org.  I do not know the current state of 
cooperation between Bookshare and higher education/OSU, but I hope that 
we are rapidly heading for a time where Bookshare will be able to have a 
copy for the next blind student who needs it.

John Gardner
Professor Emeritus, Physics, Oregon State University

On 3/2/2010 9:13 AM, Lachenbruch, Peter wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> After many years of teaching, I have a blind student in my class.  I am using a text by Utts and Heckard "Mind on Statistics" and want to know if there is a Braille edition.  Our disabilities access office is planning to convert the text to Braille, but obviously if there's such an edition already available, it would be great to know about it.
>
> More generally, the disabilities office mentioned that when they get a pdf file of a text, they often must reformat it so their translation software can work.  It struck me that some sort of a clearing house for establishing standards would be good - and then one conversion could serve for all.  I have asked the American Statistical Association committee on Disabilities and Statistics to consider this.
>
> I know that some books are read to tape or CD (my neighbor a few years ago did this for basic math books).  This would be another option.
> Tony
>
> Peter A. Lachenbruch
> Department of Public Health
> Oregon State University
> Corvallis, OR 97330
> Phone: 541-737-3832
> FAX: 541-737-4001
>
>
>
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