[Blindmath] Mathematics Textbook Accessibility

[Birkir Rúnar Gunnarsson]

Tina

Have you talked with your local resource office about the math courses
and what they have available for you?
A good low tech solution for graphs, if someone is willing to sit down
with you and explain them, is just a board with nails that form a
rectangle and then you can use rubber bands to create the graphs
themselves.
There is also thin plastic sheets on rubber mats you can draw raised
lines on with a pen.
Mind you, the sighted world relies way too much on graphs these days
and the learning approach does not have to be nearly as graphical as
they make it out to be, so you may be just fine without half the
graphs the other sighted students think they need.
For a more hi tech solution there is the ViewPlus Iveo, the resource
office might have a copy of that. Those are interactive graphs (you
place an embossed graph on top of a scanner like machine and when you
touch certain points you get audio feedback about them).

Do you know Nemeth braille? If so, may be the National Braille Press can help.
For math ml encoded math there is the MathPlayer, it is audio feedback
only at this time but it works with Internet Explorer and math
Equations saved with MathType e.g. in Word, so it is easy to create
math this way. The math ml can also be embossed to Nemeth using
Duxbury DBT translator.
I survived creating my own linear math code and RFB&D tapes and some
readers for my math courses (I took a lot of them) but it was a lot of
work and not particularly elegant.
There's not perfect solution, but these will be good enough for you
*smile*. Other people will contribute other ideas too I am sure.
Incidentally, what do you feel wuld be a fair price for a student to
buy accessibility software (in the perfect world, 0, of course, but if
you were presented with math software that made math in speech or
braille accessible, what would you  feel is the maximum you would pay
for it)?
I am merely curious, not implying anything about what it should be.
We have a funny situation in that the market is absolutely tiny
because so many blind and VI students avoid math, but they avoid math,
at least in part, because there's not enough software available to
make math accessible.
HOpefully this will change in the near future.
-Birkir

On 9/30/10, Tina Hansen <th404 at comcast.net> wrote:
> As a student aiming for a General Studies degree at my local community
> college, I need at least two mathematics courses, Elementary Algebra and
> Intermediate Algebra, to meet the requirements.
>
> In the past, I, and probably many other blind students, have been reluctant
> to take such courses because of accessibility issues. I know that while most
> mathematics texts, including the one used at my community college, are
> offered electronically, there are still a few problems. The maine one is
> that even though the narrative is OK with access software, there are serious
> issues with any visual data, such as graphs, tables, figures, and the like.
> Any attempt to convert this to audio using software alone would probably
> read like garbage, and the text file just throws out a bunch of numbers with
> little clarity.
>
> While Virtual Pencil is going a long way towards working problems and
> showing work, I know that there is still a long way to go when dealing with
> graphs. While a sighted person can look at graphs and see all the data, it's
> a bit of a challenge for a blind person to do that. I, for one, have not
> been strong at creating graphs, and interpreting them can be a bit of a
> challenge. And, how does a blind person create graphs in the first place?
>
> I know that this situation is not unusual, which is why I'd be interested to
> hear what is being done to address these issues. What low-tech solutions
> have you used to address these problems, and what high-tech solutions have
> been, or are being developed, to address these issues, particularly access
> to visual data and mathematical equasions?
>
> Finally, if you're developing software, what plans are in place so that
> schools, community colleges, or individuals can actually buy the software
> without hurting the pocketbook? If anyone has any information on addressing
> these concerns, please fill me in. Thanks.
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