[Blindmath] Access2Science

[Birkir R. Gunnarsson]

Hi Sister Roopakshi (though this sound a bit too catholic, doesn´t it?)

I agree that in some cases people have access to expensive Assistive
Technology, but when it comes to math I have not used much of it.
Never used a ViewPlus machine of any kind, unfortunately, in my
studies; either I did not know of their existance or I had no money to
get one.
I think though, that it is important to show how people do it with
technology. The first step is to show people that it is doable to do
X, Y and Z with math with equipment A. Once that is established as an
example of what it possible, it can act as an incentive for people to
seek funding, contribute code, or find other ways to solve the same
problem in a more affordable manner.
Most people, I believe, kow little to nothing about R, many do not
know much about any kind of TeX etc. MathML is a W3C standard, so it
would not be unimaginable to wite open source code arond it, if the
specs for precisely what the software needs to do and how it can do
it, were clearly defined, we have a lot of programming talent in the
world.
I think making people believe, and showing an example of those who can
do this, and get testimonies from them on how they achieve it, would
be a good step, even if some of their tools are beyond many people´s
means.
This being said, my apologies for not acting on the site right now, I
have 3 projects whose deadlines are all tomorrow, and some will spill
into Monday (or so I hope).
This is top of my priority list once I avoid drowning in this work,
however, so I am looking forward to looking at the website and
spreading the word.


On 3/31/11, Roopakshi Pathania <r_akshi_tgk at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Birkir,
>
> Birkir R. Gunnarsson <birkir.gunnarsson at gmail.com> wrote:
>> This is not something to, perhaps, do right away, but I
>> have always
>> wanted someone who is doing a higher education or fulltime
>> STEM job to
>> have a blog on a site like this and detailing the issues
>> they run into
>> and what software they have used to sole those issues,
>
> Provided that they can afford these solutions
> :-)
>
> This is largely possible in countries where support is provided to purchase
> expensive assistive technologies.
> But in the rest of the world, you are stuck in a terrible cycle.
> To work in a quantitative field, you need practically unaffordable assistive
> devices. You cannot buy these devices unless you work for a nice salary. To
> get that nice salary, you need those assistive devices.
>
> Leaving my cynical thoughts aside, I put the exact same question to Prof.
> Gardner at ICCHP.
> Are you sure that you and I are not long lost twins or something?
> :)
>
> I know a couple of people who are living the kind of life you describe.
> One is Dr. Robert Shelton who works at NASA and is the developer of
> MathTrax.
> As far as I know, he does non-accessibility related work for NASA.
> Another would be Bert who is an Economist presently based in Netherlands.
> There is also Dr. T.V. Raman who is working for Google, but he is a huge
> believer in open source technologies, so I doubt that he has used any of the
> available expensive assistive solutions.
>
> Regards
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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/birkir.gunnarsson%40gmail.com
>