[Blindmath] CSUN Talk by Well-known Math Accessibility Researcher

[Neil Soiffer]

I have spoken with Prof Karshmer about this topic in the past.  He and I
both agree that there is a huge problem to making cheap accessible hardware
such as braille display because the market size is so small.  There are no
economies of scale and the development effort represents a huge part of the
cost that must be amortized over the small number of products sold (on top
of the actual component cost).  It is only when you can piggy-back on top of
a device that is mainstream that you can have a relatively "cheap" product.
Government funded research can help reduce the development cost, but as Prof
Karshmer will animatedly tell you, it is not easy to get research grants for
accessibility -- the competition for the limited pot of money is quite
intense and rarely goes to product-oriented research and development.

I do recommend his talk -- he is a good and entertaining speaker.

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


On Tue, Feb 22, 2011 at 10:36 AM, Susan Jolly <easjolly at ix.netcom.com>wrote:

> Even though I won't be attending CSUN, I just looked through the schedule.
> There are lots of interesting talks.  I ran across one you might not notice
> and have copied the info below my signature.  This talk is by Prof. Arthur
> Karshmer, who has for well over 10 years carried out a great of research on
> the accessibility of math.  His research includes the MAVIS (Mathematics
> Accessible to Visually Impaired Students) project.  He'd be a good person to
> ask about the problems of moving academic research to practical use.
>
> SusanJ
>
> Copied info starts here:
>
> If you would like to reserve a seat for this session - Please log-in (39
> seats available)
>
> K12-2028
> Thursday, March 17, 2011 - 1:50 - 2:50 PM PST
> Intermediate
> Windsor B
>
> Solving Arithmetic Problems by the Blind: Does Dimensionality Really Make a
> Difference?
>
> Besting the value of two-dimensional representations of math to the blind
> is studied.
> Arthur Karshmer, PhD
> University of San Francisco
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Blindmath mailing list
> Blindmath at nfbnet.org
> http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/blindmath_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
> Blindmath:
>
> http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/options/blindmath_nfbnet.org/neils%40dessci.com
>