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

Wed Dec 30 19:09:11 UTC 2015

Hello all. This conversation started with a plea for help accessing three more or less separate things in e-books:
*Tables,
*Math equations,
*Figures.

Most of you are following Susan's advice of finding a quick way to solve the problem, but my post was about modern technologies that could do the job - or at least some major parts of the job. There is indeed a quick way to get help for tables and math, but I have not yet seen a suggestion for a quick solution to accessing those graphics. So let me pontificate a bit more about modern technology.

Tables have been accessible for a number of years with just about any decent screen reader provided they are marked up as tables. Fortunately it is easier to author tables properly than not, so most tables in most e-documents are likely to be properly marked up. If one is using an e-book reader application, it does need to cooperate with the screen reader, but that is also a solved problem. Big complex tables can be pretty difficult to read using audio only or even using a braille display, and it is convenient to be able to create a hard copy and read in braille or by the audio-tactile method. But for most readers, the software-only solution works just fine. If "tables" without table markup are more common than has been my experience, it would not be terribly difficult to create an application that captures a visual table and converts it to some standard format with markup. This could be done as an open source project by any number of blind computer experts but is not something that a company could afford to do.

Math access has become easy if the document is written using MathML. And many blind people can read math written In LaTeX. The big problem comes when there is no MathML or LaTeX, and this is by far the most common way math is encountered today. The Infty group has mastered OCR of math, and if a user isolates a math equation, Infty software can translate to MathML flawlessly. But Infty software is expensive, and there is presently no way to use it as I have described. It would not be difficult to expand that software to this purpose, but it would still be expensive.

Finally there are figures. The information in many simple figures is decently conveyed by the caption or surrounding text. It is common today to illustrate many concepts with little diagrams that most blind people would find more annoying than helpful. One just does not need better access to such figures. However there are figures whose content is definitely essential to understanding, especially in technical documents. Sometimes a good word description is adequate but often it is not. As far as I am aware, really good access to such figures is by means of 
* a tactile copy with braille labels,
* a talking tactile version or,
* a special interactive version.
Some people on this list know that I have spent much of my life developing talking tactile technology and occasionally some special interactive applications. The talking tactile method is broadly applicable, but unfortunately it is expensive. Students can afford it, because their academic institution pays the cost. It actually is not expensive in the long run for institutions, because other methods of making graphic accessible are far more expensive.  But, as I said in my original post, few individual blind users could afford that cost.

By the way, if you would like to see a wonderful example of a special interactive application and you know something about chemical molecules, have a look at Dr. Volker Sorge's beautiful work at:
http://progressiveaccess.com/chemistry/index.php

John

-----Original Message-----
From: Blindmath [mailto:blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Vincenzo Rubano via Blindmath
Sent: Wednesday, December 30, 2015 2:33 AM
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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