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

Wed Dec 30 13:56:11 UTC 2015

Hi all,

Something like this is sort of doable. I had replied to Ben on another list
where he posted this query. See the NVDA add-on called audio screen at
https://github.com/nvaccess/audioScreen

OCR is the key missing element at this point.

Pranav
 -----Original Message-----
From: Blindmath [mailto:blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Vincenzo
Rubano via Blindmath
Sent: Wednesday, December 30, 2015 4:03 PM
To: Blind Math list for those interested in mathematics <blindmath at nfbnet.org>
Cc: Vincenzo Rubano <vincenzorubano at email.it>
Subject: Re: [Blindmath] Reading technical e-books with tables, charts,
diagrams, etc

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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