[Blindmath] Question for Blind Mathematicians

[Jared Wright]

This was a big reason for why I just started accepting and producing 
LaTeX source for anything technical. It took time to get comfortable in 
an editing environment, but once I did then the work I was doing the 
first time around was the work I could turn in--no manual retranscribing 
into another format. And on the receiving end, LaTeX source can be 
represented in a wide variety of formats, so it greatly increased the 
options of how I read the materials given me. I don't know about anyone 
else's instructors, but I'd say knowledge of LaTeX in our math and 
computer science departments is pretty consistent, and once I had that 
channel of communication open a lot of these issues were greatly 
mitigated with no great cost to the school, no change of procedure for 
the professors other than sending me LaTeX source of materials, and 
little extra hinderance on myself other than the time it took to get 
comfortable in LaTeX, which came with plenty of other benefits like 
greater access to math on the web. And that sort of thing I usually find 
fun anyway.

Best of luck,
Jared



Jared


On 3/6/2010 4:25 PM, Ryan Thomas wrote:
>     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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