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

Thu Apr 14 18:20:20 UTC 2011

Thanks for the mention, Birkir. The NCAM guidelines on Effective Practices
for Description of Science Content within Digital Talking Books can be found
at:
http://ncam.wgbh.org/experience_learn/educational_media/stemdx

I'm happy to answer any questions.

-Madeleine

-- 
Madeleine Rothberg
Project Director
Carl and Ruth Shapiro Family National Center for Accessible Media at WGBH
http://ncam.wgbh.org
madeleine_rothberg at wgbh.org

On 4/14/11 12:54 PM, "Birkir R. Gunnarsson" <birkir.gunnarsson at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hi
> 
> This is not directly related to MathML, but you mentioned graphs in your post.
> Are you aware of the NCAM guidelines for describing charts and graphs:
> http://www.altformat.org/index.asp?pid=406&ipname=US
> (this is not the actual NCAM page but the first Google hit and there
> is a link to the NCAM page and research from there).
> I think flexible speech rules are the future for spoken math. I
> believe users who have a Nemeth or UEB background may want speech
> patterns that follow the same structure as those braille systems.
> Users who are not totally blind and can see the screen (Dyslexic users
> for instance) may want much less verbosity, as they can follow the
> math on the screen, same with math produce with refreshable braille
> and speech simultaneously (not possible right now, but that seems to
> be about to change with MathPlayer version 3, according to a recent
> post from Neil at Design Science to this list, and he's got a few
> tricks up his sleeve). :)
> Otherwise, I believe our resident Indian expert has given you all the
> resources I am aware of.
> Thanks and good luck, keep us posted on your progress.
> -Birkir
> 
> On 4/14/11, Roopakshi Pathania <r_akshi_tgk at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> 
>> Hi Jonathan,
>> 
>> As some one who depends entirely on math content delivered via text to
>> speech for her reading, I'll be glad to give you my input (As soon as I'm
>> free from certain obligations).
>> I don't have time to go into a lot of the stuff right now, but want to point
>> out a few things.
>> 
>> 1. I think that rules for pronouncing MathML rendered through MathPlayer are
>> based on MathSpeak.
>> 2. The spoken MathML is not very efficient for a power user, or some one who
>> has to deal with complicated equations on regular basis (Integration for
>> example).
>> 3. You cannot use AsTR developed by T.V. Raman to listen to math output
>> unless you have access to a hardware speech synthesizer. At least that was
>> the case when I last saw that project several months ago.
>> 4. You might also like to look at LaTeX math expressions spoken out by a
>> screen reader. Some of the ways in which LaTeX expressions are written
>> translate efficiently into speech. This is particularly true of fractions.
>> Note that I'm only talking about math as it is represented in LaTeX and not
>> anything else. We've had holy wars over this issue in the passed.
>> 5. Also google for other research projects addressing the same concern as
>> yours.
>> 
>> Regards
>> Roopakshi from India
>> Sent from my Lenovo ThinkPad
>> 
>> --- On Thu, 4/14/11, J.Fine <j.fine at open.ac.uk> wrote:
>> 
>> From: J.Fine <j.fine at open.ac.uk>
>> Subject: [Blindmath] Wanted: Examples of good articulation of mathematical
>> expressions
>> To: "'Blind Math list for those interested in mathematics'"
>> <blindmath at nfbnet.org>
>> Date: Thursday, April 14, 2011, 7:39 PM
>> 
>> 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
>> 
>> --
>> The Open University is incorporated by Royal Charter (RC 000391), an exempt
>> charity in England & Wales and a charity registered in Scotland (SC 038302).
>> 
>> 
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