[Blindmath] Wanted: Examples of good articulation of mathematical expressions

[J.Fine]

Hi

I'd like your help. My employer, the Open University, has asked me to write a specification for translation of MathML to speech text.  Please don't get your hopes up too high, because they want it by the end of the month and so it won't be comprehensive.  And there's no guarantee that software will be written that meets this specification.

In 1995 Abraham Nemeth wrote "No standard protocol exists for articulating mathematical expressions as it does for articulating the words of an English sentence."  I thing this sums up the problem beautifully.

I'd like help with what the outputs should be, particularly from those of you who screen read mathematics.  I've done some background reading and know of  Nemeth's MathSpeak, the Unified English Braille (UEB) "Guidelines for Technical Material", the output produced by Design Science's MathPlayer, and the work of T.V. Raman.  (Raman's software I've not yet installed on my computer.)

The context I'm working with is our course S151 "Mathematics for Science", which starts with numbers and powers, goes though graphs, angles, trig and logarithms, and then two chapters on probability and statistics, and finally a chapter that introduces differentiation.  I'd like the outputs to be right for that course, and correspond to what a human reader might say.

And so, for example, Pythagoras theorem should be "a squared plus b squared equals c squared".  In another post to this list I will give you some examples I have, invite comments, and ask for more examples.  I know that this does not conform to MathSpeak, but I think it's what's best for S151 students.

Best regards


Jonathan

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