[Blindmath] reading latex

[Godfrey, Jonathan]

Hello Sofia,

The only OCR tool that will process the mathematical notation is Infty Reader.

I think that OCR is a wonderful tool to have available, but it is not perfect, even for regular words. The presence of the Greek and special mathematical symbols mean that a standard OCR tool will fail to deliver accurate information to readers of a huge amount of mathematical content.

OCR is a stop gap measure for dealing with print on paper. Yes it got used in cases where what was on paper is now kept in an electronic file but it is still a fix up for dealing with content that was not made accessible at the time of production.

I did get some offers of assistance in helping make a tool that will help academics who create inaccessible documents in LaTeX who want to make accessible ones instead. I don't know how soon we'll have a solution for wider use but it's only a matter of time and energy.

We need to help ourselves a bit in this respect, but ultimately I'm helping make a tool that the document authors will use because it is their responsibility to give you the student the information you need in a form you can read.

Not sure why, but an old joke just came to mind. It's one of a series of jokes about changing light bulbs.
Q: How many social workers does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Just one, but the light bulb has to want to change.

Jonathan






-----Original Message-----
From: Sofia Gallo [mailto:gopgirl73 at gmail.com] 
Sent: Monday, 8 September 2014 11:56 a.m.
To: Godfrey, Jonathan
Cc: Blind Math list for those interested in mathematics
Subject: Re: [Blindmath] reading latex

Hi

Will it make a difference at all if I get Kurzweil to "scan" the pdf?
E.G. Pressing file > open in Kurzweil?

Sofia

On 8/31/14, Godfrey, Jonathan <A.J.Godfrey at massey.ac.nz> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Given this sort of request pops up fairly regularly, I think it's well 
> past time we actually made it practically simple for teachers (like 
> Sofia's) to convert their material into a readable document.
>
> About two years ago, I had my documents being converted into XML with 
> readable equations using tex4ht which comes with the standard miktex 
> installation. While I was working with miktex 2.8, this worked well. 
> There is something missing with the 2.9 installation that stops the 
> XML files being created though.
>
> It seems likely  to me that someone on this list must know how to get 
> this functionality back up and running properly, or already has done so.
>
> Could someone please volunteer. Perhaps one of you working in a 
> Disability Support Service office. A good starting point (the one that 
> helped me) is the article written by Michael Whapples that appears on 
> the access to science webpage. 
> http://www.access2science.com/latex/tutorial_txht.xhtml
>
> If someone wants to help me work on this, then please write off list 
> to a.j.godfrey at massey.ac.nz
>
>
> I also want to see if anyone has investigated the pandoc software. 
> This might also prove to be another solution worth committing more 
> energy towards.
>
> Cheers,
> Jonathan
>
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Blindmath [mailto:blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of 
> Sofia Gallo via Blindmath
> Sent: Monday, 1 September 2014 1:50 a.m.
> To: blindmath at nfbnet.org
> Subject: [Blindmath] reading latex
>
> Hello
>
> I have to take a statistics class in college, and my professor says he 
> writes all the documents he uses in class using latex and converts 
> them to PDF.
>
> Can I read these PDF files using Jaws or Braille? Or is there another 
> tool I can get that would allow me to read these files either with 
> Jaws or Braille?
>
> Thank you in advance
>
> Sofia
>
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