[Blindmath] Typing in Nemeth Braille

[Paul Chapin]

When we were looking at how to support a blind student who wanted to major in Math, we went through most of the arguments that have been made here. However, her first math prof was very strong in urging a latex only solution. His argument was two fold.  First, since any serious math major is going to have to know latex eventually, it was better to start her off with latex from the beginning when the level of complexity is limited than to drop her into latex at the advanced level when she'd have to learn it from the ground up in one big bite. Second it solves the problem of how to get the student's work to the professors. Rather than using Nemeth and then going through some gyrations to put it into a format accessible to sighted users, the math faculty would simply read the raw latex.

In practical terms it isn't working out quite that cleanly but it is an interesting long-term strategy. I have to say as someone who is new to the issues, and is sighted, that this all seems way more chaotic than it needs to be. I'm just struck by the number of different approaches and the number of different steps most of the solutions involve.

Paul Chapin
Academic Technology Specialist
Amherst College
X2144

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