[Blindmath] {Spam?} Re: Reintroducing myself and beta test opportunity for new STEM accessibility service.

[White, Jason J]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Blindmath [mailto:blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Russell
>
> I'm curious about your comment regarding obtaining a textbook from the
> author in LaTeX or xml formats. If an author is able to provide his text in either
> of these formats, would a student using Jaws or VoiceOver be able to read the
> textbook and understand all the math content within?
[Jason] It depends on the details. For instance, it depends on exactly what the XML format is. If it can be converted to HTML with included MathML before supplying it to the student, then they should be able to access it. If there are graphics, then much depends on whether figure descriptions are provided in the book.
For LaTeX, the format itself is just plain text, so from that point of view it has a certain degree of intrinsic accessibility. There are also tools that can (with varying degrees of success) convert it to HTML+MathML, or to braille directly (e.g., Duxbury Braille Translator). If the author has used custom TeX macros in writing the document, these can complicate the situation. However, the important point is that if these other avenues are unavailable, the student can still load the LaTeX files into a text editor and read them directly with a braille display or via speech with a screen reader.
I would suggest taking whatever format the author or publisher wrote the document in, then working with that to make it accessible to the student.


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