[BlindMath] A question from developers

[Sabra Ewing]

I use both. I need to be able to read it. If I cannot understand an equation, I will listen to it and read it at the same time. I have had some situations where the screen reader will not read it correctly, but I can read it in braille, and so in that case, I will read it out loud. When the stakes are high, I will do this to be extra careful because I could missed something about the equation including certain symbols if I only do one. I do not want to accidentally skipp over something. However, even though I use the screen reader as an enhancement, I would say that for math, science, and computer science, I primarily use braille. I have tried to listen to math-based audiobooks when that is all I could get, and it was not working for me at all. I found that I had to write everything down in braille and then read it.

Sabra Ewing

> On Jul 24, 2018, at 3:49 PM, Vincent Martin via BlindMath <blindmath at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> 
> I am mostly audio and add Braille when needed.
> I have retinitis pigmentosa and was formerly 20/20 as a child.  I became a
> very auditory learner before I knew I had the disease.  I  never used
> magnification and went directly to using a screen reading program when I was
> not even legally blind.  I learned Braille when I was not legally blind as
> well as I felt it would be beneficial to learn before I actually needed to.
> 
> Since going totally blind, I selectively use Braille when I think it will
> assist in my comprehension of something like tactile graphs  or when a
> spreadsheet gets to be to hairy to comprehend.  
> I had to use Braille when learning Python as I just could not get the hang
> of the spacing with the language using a screen reading program then.  I can
> do it now, but was glad that I had already learned Braille and got a 40 cell
> display on my Pac-mate then.  
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: BlindMath <blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Boris Veytsman
> via BlindMath
> Sent: Tuesday, July 24, 2018 12:00 PM
> To: blindmath at nfbnet.org
> Cc: Boris Veytsman <borisv at lk.net>
> Subject: Re: [BlindMath] A question from developers
> 
> 
> BV> Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2018 08:33:30 -0700
> BV> From: Boris Veytsman <borisv at lk.net>
> 
> BV> At the recent discussion following the TeX accessibility workshop at 
> BV> Rio a question was raised: do people use Braille devices for 
> BV> math-heavy texts, or screen readers only?  Can we have an informal 
> BV> straw poll here?
> 
> 
> 
> Perhaps I should add why did we discuss this.
> 
> Suppose we add LaTeX code to the math to be sent to screen reader.
> The code has backslashes in it, which may be incorrectly interpeted by the
> software.  To prevent this, we can translate each backslash to the word
> `backslash'.  However, this means 9 symbols instead of one:  not a problem
> for a screen reader, but perhaps slowing down a Braille device.
> 
> --
> Good luck
> 
> -Boris
> 
> I'd rather push my Harley than ride a rice burner.
> 
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