[Blindmath] Computer-supported math access

[Birkir Rúnar Gunnarsson]

We should include that in the eventual text of the petition (I have no
time frame yet, I am hoping a week or so until something can be put
together, but I should know more in a few days).
Something along the lines of "There is a lot of research that already
has been done in the area of braille and tactile mathematics, yet none
of this information seems to have found its way into any of the screen
reader products". "We urge you to consider improving math
accessibility via braille and speech and leverage existing research
and resources".
We could easily include a lot of this info as well, but I do not want
to point them too much in a particular direction to begin with, more
press the issue and see if anyone reacts to it.
I am not sure why NVDA does not support MathPlayer for instance,
perhaps they need user requests to do so. Combining MathPlayer with
the LiblouisXML libraries it appears a MathML to refreshable Nemeth
braille solution could be created for very little cost, a solution
that could be improved over time and one that puts NVDA way ahead of
the mainstream screen readers, John Boyer already indicated as much.
With the financial trouble NVDA is in I am not sure what, if any,
priorities they have going forward though.
But I do not want to single anyone out, NVDA just came to mind as mr
Boyer already talked about the Nemeth abilities of LiblouisXML which
NVDA uses (and i believe it supports other math braille codes as
well).


On 2/21/11, Michael Whapples <mwhapples at aim.com> wrote:
> Thanks for all those links. Yes I was aware of some of the research,
> however sadly much of it doesn't seem to have made it into a nice
> intergrated access solution. Another thing that sometimes gets me
> irratated about this is that a sighted person buys there computer and is
> able to read maths on the web (eg. firefox includes mathml support, or
> mathplayer adds the support to IE), whereas I have to obtain an
> additional piece of software to access the computer (many of which are
> very expensive, costing more than some computers) and yet that software
> doesn't allow me to read maths. Why haven't they picked up on any of
> this research which has already been done?
>
> Michael Whapples
> On -10/01/37 20:59, Susan Jolly wrote:
>> Hi Michael,
>>
>> There's actually been a lot of work on using the computer to support
>> math access.  I'd say this has been going on for at least 15 years.
>> Unfortunately, most of it doesn't seem to have made it out of academia.
>>
>> There is a good overview in the paper "Mathematics and Accessibility.:
>> There is a link to a PDF version partway down this page.  I hope the
>> paper is accessible!
>> http://www.utdallas.edu/~gupta/
>>
>> Dominique Archambault in France has also done a lot of work in this area.
>> Scroll down past the French to the sentence starting "The need for
>> accessibility is growing...." to read about some of his recent work.
>> http://chezdom.net/blog/?p=83#more-83
>>
>> The topic you mention is addressed off and on at various conferences
>> including CSUN, ICCHP, and  ACM SIGACCESS ASSETS.
>>
>> Hopefully some of the people directly involved in this research will
>> respond.
>>
>> Susan
>>
>>
>>
>
>
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