[Blindmath] Convincing a professor

[Susan Jolly]

Jose,

Thank you so much for your kind words.

I have to start with the point I always make.  In the United States it is 
against the law for a college or university to require you to do your work 
in print if you prefer to do it in braille.  The college is responsible for 
converting your work from braille to print assuming you use a standard 
braille system.  However, I completely understand anyone's reluctance to 
take the route of suing their college.

I have to say I'm shocked that you couldn't get a professor of mathematics 
to at least spend 20 minutes studying what I've written about how to read 
Nemeth braille simply by displaying it in a regular print font.  Few people 
are so busy they don't have 20 minutes!  And aren't professors supposed to 
be open-minded and curious?

My email address is at the bottom of the page about reading Nemeth and I've 
always offered to answer questions on an individual basis.  If your 
instructor is an intellectual snob you could point out that I come from a 
family of university professors and have a Ph.D. myself.  I also taught high 
school and college chemistry prior to earning my Ph.D. so I feel I have the 
background in both teaching and mathematics to be credible and to be able to 
understand if the professor has a good technical reason why he or she 
doesn't think my  approach would be adequate for what they are trying to 
accomplish.

Braille dots are very mysterious looking to a sighted person since the 
visual system does much better with connected figures than with disconnected 
ones.  So I can imagine a person who knows nothing about braille might look 
at a page of embossed braille or a line of cells on a braille display and 
mistakenly think that is what you are asking them to learn to read.

Good luck,
SusanJ