[Blindmath] Question for Blind Mathematicians

[Ryan Thomas]

   I think that some of my comments were misinterpreted.  I think that
transcribers are important and help the blind access things that we
otherwise wouldn't have access to.  That being said, I still stand by
the fact that Jose should-both from an ethical and a practical
standpoint-produce work that is readable.  It is not common in
employment that a transcriber will be their to perform their valuable
service because he or any other blind individual cannot produce things
in a generally accessible format.  This is one thing that will take
longer, but that must be taken into account when going through
college.  I agree that understanding the math is more important than
producing matterials in a readable format for the professor, but I
cannot accept that one be sacrificed for the other.
   I do all of my work in braille and then go through reading and
typing it into a word document for my professors.  Going through your
work has the potential to increase understanding, allow you to catch
previous errors and it means that you are being entirely autonomous in
that you're not dropping your homework into the lap of a transcriber
to work on converting so that it's readable.  If the student does this
it also means there won't be misinterpretation and it would most
likely take less time because transcribers will most commonly work
during business hours which means that assignments may be finished,
take several days to be converted, several more to be graded and by
that time the student is behind which doesn't help the professor or
the student at all.  I hope that clarifies my position and no offense
was intended.

-Ryan

On 3/6/10, Susan Jolly <easjolly at ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> First, Connie, I'm honored that you saved something I wrote and quoted from
> it.  I still stand behind everything I wrote at the time.
>
> However, I'd like to emphasize that I believe that understanding math is
> MUCH more important than producing material in a format the professor can
> read.
>
> Before I retired, I had a number of foreign-born (sighted) scientists as
> colleagues.  These persons were very talented scientists but, since English
> was not their first language, their written English was not always the best.
> Our institution employed technical editors to clean up scientific articles
> written by these scientists and, of course, articles written by the many
> other scientists who, despite English being their first language, also did
> not write well.  Clearly our institution felt that the scientific
> contribution was much more significant than the writing ability.  I note
> that the salary of our technical editors was significantly less than that of
> our scientists.
>
> We need more mathematicians, scientists, engineers, and other technical
> persons whose contributions are so valuable that it makes sense to employ
> other persons to provide any needed secretarial help.
>
> Sincerely,
> Susan Jolly
>
>
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