[Blindmath] Making Mathtype documents in Word accessible

Sat Dec 3 22:02:10 UTC 2011

Hi all

Neil, the instructions work well on the web page you pointd to (or did
for me, for Ben too I assume). One thing that bothers me slightly
about them, is that they claim that a blind user needs sighted
assistance the first time around. That is not correct, this can easily
be done completely independently (which is great). Indicating one
needs a sighted colleague to help the first time just always strikes
me as very patronizing.
I'd suggest changing this to (if you have problems with anyof these
steps, please consult a sighted colleague).
This is knit picky ;) and doesn't really matter, just thought I'd
throw it out there.
You can basically do 4 things with Word + MathType in terms of
accessible output.
1. Convert all equations in word document to LaTeX and then try to
read through it (Ben, I agree, it is a heck of a job trying to work
with it, it is doable though).
The advantage is that you can use refreshable braille display, for
what it's worth, you can also print the text directly witha braille
embosser and any software (PEF for instance).

2. You can use TSS from ViewPlus or DBT from Duxbury to emboss the
Word with MathType equations document to Nemeth or UeB math (or
whatever braille codes they support, I believe additional DBT supports
the French braille code).

3. You can export the Word with Mathtype equation via MathPage to a
webpage (.xht file) and then read it with IE + MathPlayer (missing
refreshable braille support,other than just showing the strings that
are spoken, does not really allow much in terms of working with it
otherwise, be it copying and pasting, analyzing etc, but good for
reading math).

4. Use the MathDaisy and save As daisy plug ins to make a Daisy MathML
document that REadHere, EasyReader, and a few other math aware Daisy
players can read. I thought REadHere/GH Player had some sort of
refreshable braille support even, but I never got it to work. Really
all that happens is that the math in the Word document is converted to
spech, so if you are using speech only, you should have no problem
grabbing that Daisy file and listening to it on VR Stream or
compatible Daisy player .. I haven't tried it, I will tonight
actually.

None of these options are perfect, but together they allow you some
flexibility, based on what you need to do exactly.

A more readable TeX output of MathType equations would be great. I
thought HR-TeX was more widely used and there were interpreters out
there to translate from MathML to HR-TeX, but on more Google search,
it appears the format is mostly theoretical and only supported by
Infty, at least I found no open source interpreter or anything of the
kind for it, though my Google searching abilities may have let me down
this once.
Once MathPlayer supports Word natively, that will be a huge step
forward and Neil and Co are working on it, dilligently I trust *grin*.
It's still not a minor project, so nothing we'll see this year, at least.
A refreshable braille code support of read math equations with
MathPlayer would be another cool feature. and with NvDA finally
support MathPlayer 3, I am hoping that perhaps there is an avenue to
look into this, if it were possible to use the work of the LiblouisXML
team to produce refreshable Nemeth/Nubs math on your display whilst
MathPlayer reads the math questions concurrently to you, I think that
would be a fantastic scenario.
I believe this is nearly impossible with other screen readers, since
we'd have to beg them to do it, and convincing these manufacturers to
put development efforst into math has not been particularly successful
(though I am by no means suggesting we should stop pestering them,
those of us who do, but if we can get together and make a superior
solution via free and open source software, it might jolt them into
life).

I am also hopeful that the EPUB3 support and rendering of MathML may
cause a revolution in math accessibility, if we can harness it, it's
just a bit too early for me to understand exactly how this works, and
it depends how those who manufacture devices compatible with EPUB3
implement the MathML part of the specs.
But, that's way off topic and subject for its own discussion. I just
wanted to point out the 4 different uses of Word with MathType, in
hope it may clarify some things for some of you.
And if I am wrong, or missing something and need a clarification
myself, then by all means, post it to this list and it will be duely
noted.

On 12/3/11, Neil Soiffer <NeilS at dessci.com> wrote:
> Yes, it is horrible.  There is a feature request to improve it and that is
> being looked at for MathType 6.8, but no decision has been made yet as to
> whether it will make it into 6.8 (there are lots of competing requests).
>
> Neil Soiffer
> Senior Scientist
> Design Science, Inc.
> www.dessci.com
> ~ Makers of MathType, MathFlow, MathPlayer, MathDaisy, Equation Editor ~
>
>
>
> On Sat, Dec 3, 2011 at 10:03 AM, Andrew Stacey
> <andrew.stacey at math.ntnu.no>wrote:
>
>> The first thing that I want to say is that is the most awful LaTeX that I
>> have
>> ever seen!  If that is what the process produces as it's LaTeX "output"
>> then
>> I'm not surprised that you are looking for another system.
>>
>> That said, this does look like the sort of thing where my system might be
>> able
>> to help as the idea behind it is to convert LaTeX to "something else" by
>> using
>> LaTeX itself to do the conversion.  So all that would need doing is for
>> someone to tell LaTeX that you want, say, \int to be written as "Integral"
>> and
>> then you could run LaTeX on the equations to convert them to something
>> suitable.
>>
>> This would take a bit of work to get to work properly, though, as, for
>> example, LaTeX likes to run on whole documents, not snippets.  Also, it
>> would
>> need considerable configuring at the start.
>>
>> As Neil's suggested another way that is working for you then I don't
>> recommend
>> this.  I mention it in case there are others for whom Neil's method
>> wouldn't
>> work.
>>
>> Andrew
>>
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