[Blindmath] What does "support braille math in a screenreader" mean technically?

[John J. Boyer]

liblouis, with either liblouisxml or liblouisutdml produces very good 
Nemeth from MathML. ViewPlus is currently using it in their TSS 
software, and that is what they tell me. Other math codes are not so 
good, but the reason is unclear. A screenreader like NVDA could pass 
MathML to liblouisutdml as a string and get back good braille math. They 
are using liblouis already. That would give them one up on Jaws and 
Window-eyes. It probably isn't hard to do.

There is also a guy in Belgium who is using liblouis and liblouis in 
OpenOffice. It can presumably handle math.

John

On Sat, Feb 19, 2011 at 01:07:09PM -0700, Susan Jolly wrote:
> Despite the Nemeth code having been a US standard for something like 40 
> years, there is no transcribing software that can currently convert print 
> math fully accurately to Nemeth.  (By print math I mean electronic math 
> represented as either LaTeX or presentation MathML.) This problem persists 
> despite there having been a significant amount of work addressing this 
> issue. The same is true for other math codes but since I know more details 
> about Nemeth I will stick mainly to that code here. So it seems to me that 
> it is more than a bit unlikely that screenreader developers would have the 
> resources to accomplish something that many others have not succeeded at.
> 
> I know there is currently a French project attempting to put support for 
> several math codes, including Nemeth, into OpenOffice.  I don't know how 
> that is progressing.
> 
> Please remember that the Nemeth code is a complete code; it has rules for 
> both text and math.  The rules for text are quite similar to the rules for 
> EBAE (English Braille American Edition) but have minor changes as necessary 
> for compatibility with the representation of math.  The reason this fact is 
> significant to this discussion is that it is my understanding that 
> screenreaders or display drivers that convert to braille text in real time 
> use the EBAE rules for text, not the Nemeth rules.
> 
> Officially here in the US, materials transcribed according to the Nemeth 
> code must consistently follow all the rules of that code.  However, my 
> guess is that many Nemeth readers would be quite happy if the text portions 
> of an HTML document were to be transcribed according to EBAE while MathML 
> islands were transcribed  according to the Nemeth rules for math.  I just 
> noticed that the latest version of DBT (Duxbury's software) has something 
> similar in that it allows for Nemeth math to be used with various 
> non-English choices for text.
> 
> There are others on this list who understand the details of MathType and of 
> screenreaders so this next may be a bit simplistic.  But it seems to me 
> that the minimum you'd want is for a screenreader to simply recognize 
> MathML islands and to at least have the capability to pass their contents 
> through a user-supplied filter on the way to the display.
> 
> Finally let me point out that there are some serious formatting issues to 
> be addressed when targetting braille math to a braille display. I'm 
> referring to both simple issues such as where to break a line and more 
> complex issues involving planar layouts.
> 
> I'm hoping for feedback here.
> 
> SusanJ
> 
> 
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-- 
John J. Boyer; President, Chief Software Developer
Abilitiessoft, Inc.
http://www.abilitiessoft.com
Madison, Wisconsin USA
Developing software for people with disabilities