[Blindmath] Reading LaTeX source

[Godfrey, Jonathan]

Hello all,

Bill's message about reading LaTeX or versions of it come up fairly regularly on this list.

Last year, I asked who would be interested in helping me do something about the problem and I received a couple of offers of assistance. I wanted to convert LaTeX source into much more readable HTML. I wanted a solution that was useful by anyone, not just the geeks out there. Tim Arnold came up with a solution that was more expansive than I had imagined. He wanted a web interface available to all whereas my focus was on the needs of blind individuals. Being a webpage, the solution is not restricted to anyone so is available to Disability Support Service staff and sighted academics as well.

Ultimately, I encouraged Tim to go with his proposal and have helped test his developments over the last six months or so. My usefulness as his sole tester has run its course and we now need more users to try out the conversion tool that he has created.

Bill and others should Go to
http://convertlatex.com/
where you can upload a tex file and have it converted to HTML with equations in three different formats: plain MathML, using MathJax, and graphics with alt tags that are the mathematical expressions written out in the original LaTeX.

I'm very happy receiving the feedback to your experimentation (off-list is probably preferred) and you can also contact Tim from the web page itself.

We do know of some limitations. Processing bibtex references for example and handling graphics. A shopping list of our needs is already in existence and the want list is there too. I wanted to know exactly what was written out as the mathematical expressions while others will want to use MathPlayer, but is there another representation that people would like?

Please, if you do nothing else, look at the page and give thanks to someone that has used his time and energy to help our community.

Thank you Tim for your efforts,
Jonathan