[Blindmath] StatsPortal and accessible material/eBook guidance ...

[Godfrey, Jonathan]

Hello,

On my list of things to do is the resurrection of a process that used to work very well for me. I would take all my tex files and process them into the pdf needed for upload to the online teaching environment we use to give to the sighted students I teach, and also process my documents into html/xml for myself and other blind readers (if there were any interested.)

This worked well under miktex2.8, but broke once I moved to 2.9 (under duress) once 2.8 was no longer supported.

I did get some hints as to why my own setup fell over and sorry, I haven't addressed it as it isn't top of mind to date.

The files were processed by using tex4ht instead of the standard latex processing. All equations could be read using a screen reader from that point.

My current interest is in what pandoc can do for us. Theoretically, pandoc should be able to take a tex file and process it into markdown that can then be processed into html or MS Word. The equations in the html would be rendered using MathJax and are at least a little readable, but I haven't yet checked out what the MS word equations are like.

As an experienced Latex user, I read plenty of documents in source code. I've never been satisfied with  way of getting information. In the next few weeks I have to examine a PhD thesis written in latex. I've done this before and it's often painful. Last time, I saw whole sentences that the sighted examiners didn't as they'd been commented out. I was left thinking that authors shouldn't let such material out of their computers.

Good luck,
Jonathan




-----Original Message-----
From: Blindmath [mailto:blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Bishop, Jeff - (jeffbis) via Blindmath
Sent: Tuesday, 26 August 2014 7:05 a.m.
To: 'Blind Math list for those interested in mathematics'
Subject: [Blindmath] StatsPortal and accessible material/eBook guidance ...

Hello Everyone,

I have had a request from our University math college to work with a professor in making content more accessible for her Statistics class.

I had a number of questions if it would be OK:


1.        Has anyone used StatsPortal by chance and if so is it accessible? This is the site:

http://courses.bfwpub.com/ips6e.php

They supposedly have a 508 compliant version of their site but I am unsure what that means for all practical purposes.


2.        The professor is writing her own EBook and will distribute it in PDF file format. She is using LaTeX notation for the math equations as I understand it. Do you think this is sufficient or would you suggest an alternative approach in conveying the mathematical equations? For example, perhaps converting them to MathML perhaps?


I know that MathML (using the MathPlayer plugin) only works with older Internet Explorer browsers so I am unsure if that is really a viable platform at the moment?

Any advice on these issues is hugely and graciously appreciated.

Thanks everyone,

Jeff Bishop

_______________________________________________
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/a.j.godfrey%40massey.ac.nz
BlindMath Gems can be found at <http://www.blindscience.org/blindmath-gems-home>