[Blindmath] making PDF textbooks accessible is a HUGE problem

[Mary Woodyard]

This inability to easily make PDF textbooks accessible is probably one of
the biggest challenges K-12 and college students face today.  In my son's
academic experience - his Math textbooks are not used at all.  Every lesson
is taught with a PDF the teacher or the grade level chairs for Math have put
together themselves.  This problem was created because each state had their
own standard and a lot of textbooks were written for other state's standards
so each state starting customizing their own curriculum to their own
standards.  My son is in 10th grade now and I actually cannot remember a
year in his academic life where they used his Math book.

Science - they do seem to use some of the book.  Math - not so much.  I only
comment on this to illustrate the need to help our students figure out how
to make these PDFs accessible as soon as possible.  To make it even harder,
the school frequently changes the order their curriculum is taught.  My son
is lucky - he has a parapro enlarging his copies to 11 by 17 and he has
enough usable vision to be able to interpret them if the contrast is good
and the spacing is adequate.  However, the lesson plans can change suddenly
and they will have enlarged the wrong lesson for him.

I know everyone is working on it - but the sooner someone can help our
students access these Math and Science PDFs - the better.  Hopefully with a
majority of the states moving to the Common Core standards -soon they
schools will have textbooks that reflect their standards.  However, there
will always be teachers that teach from PDFs.  In fact - I would estimate
that 70% of my son's curriculum is PDF driven.  

-----Original Message-----
From: blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
Behalf Of blindmath-request at nfbnet.org
Sent: Monday, July 30, 2012 1:01 PM
To: blindmath at nfbnet.org
Subject: Blindmath Digest, Vol 72, Issue 15

Send Blindmath mailing list submissions to
	blindmath at nfbnet.org

To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
	http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/blindmath_nfbnet.org
or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
	blindmath-request at nfbnet.org

You can reach the person managing the list at
	blindmath-owner at nfbnet.org

When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than
"Re: Contents of Blindmath digest..."


Today's Topics:

   1. making pdf textbook accessible (John Heim)
   2. Re: making pdf textbook accessible (John Gardner)


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2012 09:37:09 -0500
From: "John Heim" <jheim at math.wisc.edu>
To: "Blind Math list for those interested in mathematics"
	<blindmath at nfbnet.org>
Subject: [Blindmath] making pdf textbook accessible
Message-ID: <83DF1373EB0E428B8053E21504C43863 at math.wisc.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
	reply-type=original

All,

I am working with a professor who has written a calculus textbook as a pdf
document.  He wants to know if it will be accessible and if not how to make
it so.  He says the forumlas in the book were created via pdflatex.



------------------------------

Message: 2
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2012 08:46:04 -0700
From: "John Gardner" <john.gardner at orst.edu>
To: "'Blind Math list for those interested in mathematics'"
	<blindmath at nfbnet.org>
Subject: Re: [Blindmath] making pdf textbook accessible
Message-ID: <004301cd6e6a$6dc3a720$494af560$@gardner at orst.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain;	charset="us-ascii"

Hi, the unfortunate answer is "no".  The Latex source files can be read by
some blind people.  Can the original Latex document be converted to HTML
with math as MathML, using something like TX4HT?  That could be quite
accessible.

There presently is no direct way to make PDF math accessible.  Even text in
PDF is often inaccessible unless it is tagged. 

-----Original Message-----
From: blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
Behalf Of John Heim
Sent: Monday, July 30, 2012 7:37 AM
To: Blind Math list for those interested in mathematics
Subject: [Blindmath] making pdf textbook accessible

All,

I am working with a professor who has written a calculus textbook as a pdf
document.  He wants to know if it will be accessible and if not how to make
it so.  He says the forumlas in the book were created via pdflatex.

_______________________________________________
Blindmath mailing list
Blindmath at nfbnet.org
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/blindmath_nfbnet.org
To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
Blindmath:
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/blindmath_nfbnet.org/john.gardner%40orst.e
du




------------------------------

_______________________________________________
Blindmath mailing list
Blindmath at nfbnet.org
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/blindmath_nfbnet.org


End of Blindmath Digest, Vol 72, Issue 15
*****************************************