[Blindmath] Making Mathtype documents in Word accessible

[Neil Soiffer]

Yes, you can easily (with help from a sighted colleague the first time
around) create web pages from word documents that read well.  For
instructions see:
http://www.dessci.com/en/support/mathplayer/tsn/tsn112.htm#Speaking_Math_Using_MathPlayer

The problem with IE9 and MathPlayer involves XHTML pages.  The page you
looked at was an HTML page (not XHTML).  If you have IE9 installed, then
when you follow those instructions, make sure you choose "MathPlayer (IE
behavior)" in step 8d.  Normally I tell people to choose "XHTML+MathML"
because that also displays in Firefox and some other browsers, but because
of the current IE9 problem, stick to "MathPlayer (IE behavior)" which
produces an HTML page.

It might be simplest for your instructor to follow those steps and have
him/her send you the web page -- it will only take a minute extra to do
that.

Good luck,

Neil Soiffer
Senior Scientist
Design Science, Inc.
www.dessci.com
~ Makers of MathType, MathFlow, MathPlayer, MathDaisy, Equation Editor ~



On Fri, Dec 2, 2011 at 7:43 PM, Ben Humphreys <brh at opticinspiration.org>wrote:

> 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<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<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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