[Blindmath] problems reading PDF scientific documents

Wed Jun 6 10:28:14 UTC 2012

I personally have not used infty reader, however I have heard from some people that they have found it useful. One such person is John Miller, who I think is more likely to be found on the NFB-science list he may be on this one. I have also met people here in the UK who have used it and said they had some good results.

However infty reader is an optical character recognition (OCR) package, so it isn't guaranteed to get everything 100% correct and quality of results is highly dependent on the quality of the original document. I think OCR is the only way currently PDF will be made accessible for maths, even the maxtract project I mentioned said that they cannot get all the information they need by parsing the PDF document. I believe there may be some work on including maths in a PDF in an accessible form, however that probably is years away from completion and will require the PDF to be created in the correct way so won't work for current PDF documents.

As for converting Word documents to LaTeX, its not something I have really done. I do know there is software out there but I haven't tried any. Normally if I have needed to read maths in a Word document I have used MathType from design science, which can either put the document out to HTML with MathML which can be viewed in internet explorer with math player and a screen reader, or you can get it to toggle the equations within the word document to be in LaTeX notation (the rest of the document is still normal word stuff, the equations are the only thing in LaTeX notation).

As for the price of MathType, may be your college/university has a license for it which you could use, if not the student license of MathType isn't too bad on price.

Also while on accessibility of Word and maths, I believe Design science have created some software to allow word documents with maths to be exported as daisy books. I don't know what cost on this is like or how well it works as I haven't used it. Obviously you would also need a daisy reader which is capable of maths content (I believe GH-player and Dolphin's daisy reader both can do this, there may be others).

Michael Whapples
On 6 Jun 2012, at 00:06, Géssica Michelle dos Santos Pereira wrote:

> Thanks for your advice
> 
> Michael,
> 
> Do you think the infty reader really works? I've tried the trial
> version, but the result is so strange... it means there are characters
> left. Is there anything that I have to do before processing the pdf
> documentt? I've got another proble now.It only recognizes the
> alfanumerics characters and not the Maths characters, I don't know
> why, but the out file is a "pdf2txt" instead of "txt.
> Could you also tell me how you do to convert Word format to LaTeX too?
> I've tried the Grindeq, but I think it doesn't recognize all the
> document.
> Thank you for the  clue on the new software , I will be watching.
> 
> ***
> 
> Lucas,
> 
> Exactly! I'm from Curitiba! =)
> In the graduation phase the teachers translated the documents for me, some
> thing like this: an integral became I [i, j] f(x) dx...
> But now I'm taking the master degree, there are lots of materials to
> read, we can't keep translating like that.
> And take this: what to do when the teacher doesn't know LaTex?
> Of course, let's keep talking!
> 
> ***
> 
> José,
> 
> I've seen other softwares in the same line, I mean, softwares to edit
> LaTeX documents... but how to solve  the reading problem?
> 
> ***
> 
> Best wishes,
> 
> Géssica Michelle
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 2012/6/1, Michael Whapples <mwhapples at aim.com>:
>> Hello,
>> Further to that last message, one of the projects I am aware of which is
>> working on the problem of accessing maths in PDF is maxtract and the
>> blog for it can be found at
>> http://researchblogs.cs.bham.ac.uk/math-access/category/maxtract/
>> 
>> This is work in progress and I don't know when they plan to have
>> something usable out.
>> 
>> Michael Whapples
>> On 31/05/2012 10:36, Michael Whapples wrote:
>>> On 31/05/2012 01:26, Lucas Radaelli wrote:
>>>> Hey Jessica,
>>>> 
>>>> If you are from Curitiba we are from the same city! :)
>>>> 
>>>> I have got a lot of problems in this area too. Specially in Brazil
>>>> where it seems that nobody understands about that to give us a hand.
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> What my teachers have done during graduation was create the scientific
>>>> documents already in LaTeX, and they offered the normal pdf to other
>>>> students. The program that michael mentioned I have never used yet,
>>>> but gonna check it out. I did not oppenned the website yet, but I am
>>>> almost sure that it is more than 500 dolars... I hope that I am wrong!
>>>> 
>>>> You can send me a mail too, we can keep in contact to finde solutions
>>>> together here in Brazil.
>>>> 
>>>> Greetings!
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 2012/5/30, Michael Whapples<mwhapples at aim.com>:
>>>>> The infty reader www.inftyproject.org may help. I understand other
>>>>> things
>>>>> are being developed but this the only working solution for now.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Michael Whapples
>>>>> 
>>>>> Sent from my iPod
>>>>> 
>>>>> On 30 May 2012, at 22:24, Géssica Michelle dos Santos
>>>>> Pereira<gessicamichelle at gmail.com>  wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>>> Dear all,
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> I am Gessica, from the south of Brazil, with visual impairment, having
>>>>>> difficulties in reading PDF scientific documents, when they show
>>>>>> formulae.. I use screen reader Jaws and I've heard that LaTeX or
>>>>>> MathML might be useful but would you know how to convert the PDF
>>>>>> documents into these formats? .....moreover...how to use them?  I
>>>>>> wonder if you could help me find the solution.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Best regards,
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Gessica Michelle
>>>>>> 
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>>>>>> 
>>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>>> 
>>>>> 
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>>>> 
>>> Yes, unfortunately the infty reader software is expensive. It is worth
>>> noting though that infty reader is OCR software for maths, so could
>>> put printed maths from paper into an electronic format such as LaTeX
>>> or MathML as well.
>>> 
>>> Hopefully one of the other projects I know of will allow access to PDF
>>> at a lower cost.
>>> 
>>> In many cases the PDF is created from another format such as LaTeX so
>>> it might be worth contacting the author to see if they can provide the
>>> document in another format.
>>> 
>>> Michael Whapples
>>> 
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>>> 
>> 
>> 
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> 
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