[Blindmath] problems reading PDF scientific documents

Tue Jun 19 22:19:35 UTC 2012

Hello Michael,

Thanks again for your patience and attention.
I am sure your advice is more than useful and I'll be putting it into practice.

Regarding the electronic presentations I think I'll keep memorizing
scripts as my Braille is as slow as reading  screen reader.

Best wishes

Gessica Michelle

2012/6/19, Michael Whapples <mwhapples at aim.com>:
> Hello,
> I only really know about the question about diagrams and powerpoint.
>
> On the diagram stuff there are many tools and many research projects.
>
> Probably the most significant for drawing are the packages for LaTeX,
> you will have a choice of various packages, some general drawing
> packages others being specific to certain types of drawing. Also if you
> choose to use LaTeX for writing documents then this will fit in very
> well for including diagrams in documents.
>
> One very popular package for LaTeX for drawing is PGF/TikZ, this is a
> general package but many packages for specific drawing types build on
> this. I think TikZ has a circuit library anyway. For a quick
> introduction, no where near covering all capabilities of TikZ, you may
> want to look at the LaTeX wikibook (http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX)
> which has a chapter on PGF/TikZ.
>
> However here are two other packages for LaTeX for circuit diagrams,
> circuitikz and circ. Doing a google search for the package name
> (probably also with LaTeX) should give useful results for learning about
> those packages.
>
> Other accessible tools for drawing I think are more general or are not
> specific to circuit drawings. However some of the more general tools may
> still be useful. I know that Richard Baldwin made some tools for
> creating SVG diagrams, if you go back through the list you probably will
> find links to them.
>
> Another alternative might be IVEO from ViewPlus but then you are talking
> quite a bit of money, however IVEO could also provide help with reading
> diagrams as well.
>
> Also I know some here have mentioned using the voice
> (http://www.seeingwithsound.com) to view diagrams (both printed and on
> the computer I think). I personally never really managed to get on with
> the voice, but I can see value in it if you can learn to use it. How
> complicated the diagram can be before its too hard to understand with
> the voice I don't know, others might be able to give better advice.
>
> Finally I will mention a research project, I think they have a prototype
> out, and while they haven't focussed on circuit diagrams may be they
> would be willing to look at supporting them if you were willing to work
> with them and give feedback. Anyway the website for that project is
> http://ccmi.eecs.qmul.ac.uk
>
> Now to the powerpoint stuff, or may be more accurately electronic
> presentations. I personally have not used powerpoint so don't know much
> about it. If for diagram creation and document authoring you were to go
> with LaTeX, an obvious extension might be to do your presentations in
> LaTeX. There are a number of packages for doing this, beamer is the one
> I know about and one of the more popular. With beamer you write your
> document in the same way as any other LaTeX document, inserting commands
> to tell it where slides begin and end, information about overlays, etc,
> and then you compile to PDF. When you give the presentation, you open
> the PDF in adobe reader, change to full screen mode and move by pages to
> change the slide.
>
> How to follow what you are presenting when doing the presentation is
> something you may need to work out for yourself. Some have said one
> problem with beamer is that the output is not accessible to them, that
> is not too much of a problem for me as I don't like using a screen
> reader while presenting, its too easy to have awkward pauses while you
> listen to what the computer speech is saying, so normally I have
> Brailled notes to hand.
>
> I hope this helps you.
>
> Michael Whapples
> On 18/06/2012 23:04, Géssica Michelle dos Santos Pereira wrote:
>> Hello Michael,
>>
>> Thanks for your e-mail and encouragement.
>> As you suggested feeling free to ask questions, here they go:
>> - I would like to hear more about the diagram tools as I deal with
>> circuit diagrams in charts all the time;
>> - I am having problems getting MatLab to work with Jaws. I followed
>> the instructions from MathWorks and Java Access Bridge sites....but,
>> no success.
>> - Power point: how to make presentations without getting lost in the
>> script? (do I have to memorize the whole article?)
>> - Can I get a tip on a good tool that can replace HP50G calculator?(Do
>> I really need to solve all the integrals analitically?)
>>
>> That's all I can think of, at the moment.
>> Thanks again for all your support.
>>
>> Best wishes,
>> Gessica Michelle
>>
>> 2012/6/13, Michael Whapples <mwhapples at aim.com>:
>>> Its good to hear that you are having some success.
>>>
>>> As for diagrams, yes they probably will need some help from another
>>> person, however there are a number of tools out there which may help
>>> you. Some are commercial offerings and cost others are free and
>>> sometimes part of a research project. There are tools for both viewing
>>> and creating diagrams. I have just finished preparing some examples for
>>> a workshop on creating diagrams within LaTeX documents, the particular
>>> package I am covering in the examples is a general drawing package but
>>> there are some packages which build on it for more specific diagram
>>> types (probably even ones for electrical circuit diagrams).
>>>
>>> There may be times when it all seems hard and the odds against you, but
>>> keep pushing and you should manage to succeed in the end. Feel free to
>>> ask more questions if you have them (eg. if you want more details on
>>> accessible diagram software).
>>>
>>> Michael Whapples
>>> On 13/06/2012 22:37, Géssica Michelle dos Santos Pereira wrote:
>>>> Hello,
>>>>
>>>> Thank you again for the advice.and sorry for the late response.
>>>>
>>>> Here some good news:
>>>> I've tried the Mathtype, the result is not bad. It doesn't work as the
>>>> tutorial says, but maybe it is because of  the version. The important
>>>> thing is that I am not in the negative zone anymore, this means  that
>>>> for the first time I've been able to read a doc document with
>>>> formulae.
>>>>
>>>> I will try to ask for help from some sighted to clean the input pdf
>>>> document after printing it into tif, then process it in InftyReader.
>>>> Anyway, I am an Electrical Engeneer and I will keep needing a sighted
>>>> help because of the diagrams and charts.
>>>>
>>>> I've asked  the original document in doc to some paper's authors and
>>>> so far I've got three replies out of four requests ... not at all
>>>> bad!!!.
>>>>
>>>> I haven't tried the MathML and the MathPlayer yet, but I will.
>>>>
>>>> Well... so far, so good.
>>>>
>>>> Kind regards,
>>>>
>>>> Géssica Michelle
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> 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/mwhapples%40aim.com
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> 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/gessicamichelle%40gmail.com
>>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> 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/mwhapples%40aim.com
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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/gessicamichelle%40gmail.com
>