[BlindMath] Godel Escher Bach

[Sina Bahram]

Having done a lot of work in this space, please allow me to share some
thoughts.

With mathematics in textbooks, the problem is rather complex, as you may or
may not know. MathML is one possibility, but rarely do publishers offer this
(though that pipeline is getting much better). That means that often times
the mathematics is imbedded into the books as picture files, which is
completely useless for accessibility purposes. That, sadly, is one of the
better cases, because the worst case is when the book needs to be physically
scanned instead of electronically provided, at which point one is at the
mercy of OCR and other suboptimal technologies for converting visual
representations of mathematics into digitally accessible semantic
representations therein.

I and many other people are working on all of these problems, and the
Diagram Center, part of Benetech who runs Bookshare, are some of the hardest
working and most knowledgeable people in the space, but it takes a lot of
time to transform entire industries whose digital practices last evolved in
the 90's and 00's.

Various research projects around the world involve using computer vision and
machine learning to recognize mathematics and subsequently transforming that
into accessible formats. Still other efforts involve educating publishers
about including accessible information within their digital formats and
providing reference implementations of HTML5 and other templates to
facilitate access for all audiences, not just those who are vision-impaired.

None of the above removes the frustration of not having immediate access to
a book like one's peers, but I can confidently say that things are slowly
getting a lot better.

Take care,
Sina

President, Prime Access Consulting, Inc.
Twitter: @SinaBahram
Company Website: https://www.pac.bz
Personal Website: https://www.sinabahram.com
Blog: https://blog.SinaBahram.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Sabra Ewing <sabra1023 at gmail.com> 
Sent: Tuesday, April 17, 2018 1:43 PM
To: Blind Math list for those interested in mathematics
<blindmath at nfbnet.org>
Cc: Sina Bahram <sina at sinabahram.com>
Subject: Re: [BlindMath] Godel Escher Bach

They were not fantastic about it with me. Every time I try to get a math
textbook from them, it was not accessible. The equations we're not exactly
removed, but it is hard to describe what they are like. Amanda was there
though. She can tell you what they were like. Book share never fixed it.

Sabra Ewing

> On Apr 17, 2018, at 11:32 AM, Sina Bahram via BlindMath
<blindmath at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> 
> If you let bookshare know through the form on their website, they are 
> fantastic about rescanning/correcting the book.
> 
> President, Prime Access Consulting, Inc.
> Twitter: @SinaBahram
> Company Website: https://www.pac.bz
> Personal Website: https://www.sinabahram.com
> Blog: https://blog.SinaBahram.com
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: BlindMath <blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Amanda 
> Lacy via BlindMath
> Sent: Tuesday, April 17, 2018 1:12 PM
> To: Blind Math list for those interested in mathematics 
> <blindmath at nfbnet.org>
> Cc: Amanda Lacy <lacy925 at gmail.com>
> Subject: [BlindMath] Godel Escher Bach
> 
> Does anyone know where to get an accessible version of this book?
> 
> I was enjoying it until around the chapter on recursion. At that point 
> the text version I found contained gibberish where the theorems should be.
> The Bookshare version was just as useless; it left them out altogether.
> How'd you like to read, "...and when you combine theorem removed with 
> theorem removed..."
> 
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