[Blindmath] Making Mathtype documents in Word accessible

[Ken Perry]

I am not sure if this will help but I found something on the following page
from Design sience that I didn't know they had and I am not sure they are
still upkeeping but I am sure he will say if I post this.  Here is the info
and then I will also add the page where I found it.

Design Science MathFlowT Exchange works with Arbortext's Interchange
software to import documents from Microsoft Word containing MathType and
Equation Editor equations. Equations are converted to MathML while the
surrounding document is converted into XML.

http://www.w3.org/Math/Software/mathml_software_cat_converters.html


-----Original Message-----
From: blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
Behalf Of Ben Humphreys
Sent: Friday, December 02, 2011 10:43 PM
To: blindmath at nfbnet.org
Subject: [Blindmath] Making Mathtype documents in Word accessible

Hi folks,

I've been struggling with a problem all semester that may very well 
have a much better solution than the one I've been using.

Briefly, here's the scenario:

My instructor types all her material in Microsoft Word using 
Mathtype.  Unfortunately, when I convert from Mathtype to Latek, it 
produces such a jumple of gobblygook that even my best perl parser 
can't turn it into something simple to have read by my screen 
reader.  Latex is just not a format you want to work math problems in.

So I've resorted to having a human re-type the problems in a text 
editor using my own simple format, as mentioned previously on this 
list.  Example:

Integral x^2 - 2x dx

So I'm always at the mercy of rapidly finding someone to type things 
in at the last minute, especially for exams and quizzes.

if converting to Latex doesn't produce clean or easily understandable 
results, then I was thinking perhaps MathML might be a better option.

When I visit the page:

http://www.dessci.com/en/products/mathplayer/tech/accessibility.htm#Some 
Sample Equations to Speak

with Mathplayer 3 and IE 9, all the equations read wonderfully.  So 
I'm not sure what the issue is with Mathreader and screen readers 
under IE9 but this page seems to work great for me.

Now for my question.

If I have a Word document typed up by my instructor in Word using 
Mathtype equations, such as the folllowing:

http://personal.bhent.com/calc/review4.doc

Is there a procedure I can use to turn these equations into something 
readable by Mathreader, similar to those sample equations from Design 
Science on the above web page?

Or is the MathML going to suffer from the same gobblygook that seems 
to plague my instructor's Mathtype equations when converted to Latek?

This would be so huge if I could get to the bottom of it.  It would 
mean I could do Calc II and Calc III with much less assistance and
frustration.

Any help from those of you more initiated than me with Mathtype and 
MathML would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,

Ben Humphreys



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