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

Sun Feb 20 15:46:15 UTC 2011

Hi

I am not passing judgement on any braille code, or offering up expert
opinion, but I think that if our braille system cannot support math,
both on a refreshable braille device, as well as in a printed book, we
need to take a serious look at revising it (I am not saying that it
does not, it is merely an observation).
We live in the world of computers, we need braille, I believe, to
interact with complex objects and ideas expressed in math and science,
being restricted to braille books severely limits us, as they are
bulky, heavy and take up lots of paper, and are extremely expensive to
produce.
Certainly refreshable braille devices are not precisely cheap either,
but less so than most embossers, and they are light, quiet and
portable. It would be nice to get cheap multi-line displays, but we
can't sit around and wait for them to come on the market for a
reasonable price, for decades.

We can use audio indicators along with braille to help with
navigation, may be beeps or a spoken phrase at the beginning and end
of math expressions within a text, to help more clearly demarkate the
math expressions, all that is doable through a screen reader.
Fortunately, lists like this one, has a lot of expertese that could be
utilized if a screen reader vendor took the initiative and gave
MathBraille a serious consideration.
People like Susan and John would be valuable resources, if they were
willing and able to lend their time.
I will certainly be happy to come up with ideas, once I am ready to do
so and once we got to such a point in the process.
Thanks
-Birkir

On 2/19/11, John J. Boyer <john.boyer at abilitiessoft.com> wrote:
> 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
>
>
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