[Blindmath] Reading technical e-books with tables, charts, diagrams, etc

Wed Dec 30 10:33:12 UTC 2015

Hi John,

this looks an interesting project. Why do we *really* need an hardware product? It would be much simpler, and maybe cheaper, just to develop a pure software system, I think.

Looking forward to hearing from you, if you want to share further details about your idea.

Vincenzo.

> Il giorno 30 dic 2015, alle ore 03:01, Victorious via Blindmath <blindmath at nfbnet.org> ha scritto:
> 
> A possible alternative is not to go the commercial route but try to
> crowd-fund the resources required to develop this software; similarly to
> what was done for NVDA remote? I think this is an issue that many people can
> relate to, and may be willing to contribute.
> 
> -Vic
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Blindmath [mailto:blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of John
> Gardner via Blindmath
> Sent: Wednesday, December 30, 2015 2:50 AM
> To: Blind Math list for those interested in mathematics
> <blindmath at nfbnet.org>
> Cc: John Gardner <john.gardner at viewplus.com>
> Subject: Re: [Blindmath] Reading technical e-books with tables, charts,
> diagrams, etc
> Importance: High
> 
> Ben, in principle, tables, math, and graphics can be accessible in e-books.
> Some publishers are beginning to make e-books accessible (well at least the
> math and tables), but it is likely to be many years before most, especially
> STEM books are accessible. 
> 
> So I have a question. It is possible today to put a decent table browser in
> an e-book reader. It is also possible to make software that would recognize
> math equations pretty accurately and would make many graphics accessible.
> But the full system would be expensive, costing a couple thousand dollars up
> front and a software subscription of a few hundred dollars a year. I doubt
> that many blind people could afford that. I am pretty good at making costs
> small for blind end users, but I cannot do magic. Any thoughts from this
> list about some way to sponsor this for blind people? The reality of life is
> that there are just not many blind people doing technical work, so without
> sponsorship, a company that made such a system could not expect to sell much
> and would not be in business very long.
> 
> John
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Blindmath [mailto:blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Ben
> Humphreys via Blindmath
> Sent: Tuesday, December 29, 2015 6:52 AM
> To: blindmath at nfbnet.org
> Cc: Ben Humphreys <brhbrhbrh at gmail.com>
> Subject: [Blindmath] Reading technical e-books with tables, charts,
> diagrams, etc
> 
> Good morning listers,
> 
> I'm curious to know what you all do when you're happily plodding through an
> electronic book and you get to an inaccessible table, formula, graph, code
> sample, figure etc?
> 
> For the books I read, this happens about every 10 minutes.
> 
> So far, my strategy has been to buy books in Kindle format, remove the DRM,
> and extract the HTML and graphics.  Then read the text in browser.
> 
> The text in the browser typically indicates the graphic it refers to, so
> I'll go find the graphic and run it through Abbey OCR, with generally good
> results.
> 
> But this has several disadvantages:
> * Momentum reading the text is lost while fighting graphics
> * Text tables must still be read into Excel so one can navigate easily with
> spoken row and column headings
> * OCR works nicely for tables, code samples but not for charts or diagrams
> * OCR accuracy ranges from 0% to 97% but even if it's very close, a single 1
> that turns into an i is problematic without human review
> 
> For charts and diagrams, I can envision someone skilled in Photoshop
> removing noisy backgrounds, enhancing important lines, and labeling
> important points in Braille font, then embossing.
> 
> I guess in a K-12 setting, a Teacher of Visually Impaired person would
> birddog students books and do these kind of things.
> 
> But once out of high school, where does one find such a person?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Ben
> 
> 
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