[BlindMath] Learning High School Math

Fri Jul 16 19:52:15 UTC 2021

Hi Rastislav,

Thanks for providing suggestions and detailed information. I really appreciate your help. 

I looked into AsciiMath and as you mentioned, it seems simple to read and write compared to Latex but the underlying reason for using Latex is that it is capable of helping her all the way to graduation or post-graduation if she wishes to pursue. As per my understanding, Latex won't just help in Math but also in Physics, Chemistry, Graphs, Charts etc.

It amazing to know that you were able to deal with all this complexity without using Braille. I am not sure what screen reader is available on Linux but JAWS on Windows is pretty bad. Memory Hog as well as very frequently stops speaking and then we have to ALT + TAB to switch to different window and then come back to previous window and it will start working magically again. 

I also prefer using command line rather than GUI and have been suggesting daughter to use the same as I find the command line more accessible as well.

I'll certainly try using Math Scanner and hopefully, it will help in converting image to text. 

Also, thanks for providing reference to Pandoc software. I was looking for a software that could generate different formats like Word/PDF and this software seems like single stop shop for that purpose. 

Again, thanks for your feedback.

Thanks
Shail

-----Original Message-----
From: BlindMath <blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Rastislav Kish via BlindMath
Sent: Tuesday, July 13, 2021 6:15 PM
To: blindmath at nfbnet.org
Cc: Rastislav Kish <rastislav.kish at protonmail.com>
Subject: Re: [BlindMath] Learning High School Math

Hello Shail,

personally, my universal answer for high-school math is AsciiMath.

AsciiMath is a math format like LaTeX, just much easier to both read and write.

In fact, it's so natural that I was able to work with quite massive expressions without really paying attention to what I'm doing and still get them right.

The naturality of AsciiMath is also an advantage when exchanging data, teachers can check it in the plain form without any visualisation, on the other hand, they can write equations without any special software or other equipment.

The editor I used was simply Notepad back on Windows, now on Linux, my 'swiss-army knife' is Pluma.

Word doesn't in my view offer any significant advantages for math and on the other hand, has quite few caveats one must deal with like the spelling corrector, letters capitalizer or the overall program slowness.

When a teacher had a test already prepared in Word, I usually just copied everything to Pluma and returned the results in a plain-text format.

That did not necessarily need to be the case though, for example on math we did not have pre-printed tests at all, the teacher simply wrote tasks on the table, dictating as she was writing so I could catch everything.

Also one more thing to note, I may be in minority on this, but I solve everything exclusively by sound, no braille involved.

As for education and training, Openstax is a very good resource with accessible high-school as well as some university level math. All topics i read were well and comprehensively explained, providing also some exercises for training.

As for dealing with math in images, I have developed math_scanner:

https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2FRastislavKish%2Fmath_scanner&data=04%7C01%7C%7C7944d2de762c455280ac08d94664efb2%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637618221590993124%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=qmjE0wC8RiEEZT5x084FX3%2FeMnFaA1pTS8eox0YzU00%3D&reserved=0

which has been showing some promising results so far. There is already an experimental Windows support for now in a separate branch and my early tests on the proprietary platform vent quite good.

The only problem is, that it's a bit complicated to setup, I initially thought that anyone can easily learn to work with command line and install the few dependencies if there are detailed instructions.

But after testing it with few people, I don't think so anymore. :)

Plus the whole project is for now a bit of a experiment, there is no long and deep testing behind it, so there may be hidden pitfalls in terms of accuracy and reliability.

So it depends on your daughter's personality. If she has technical talent and is cunning enough to use an experimental tool, I think she should be able to make use of it.

She could join the Windows version testing in that case, mostly for the Tesseract binaries, which I have compiled and which are not yet globally available.

On the other hand, if math is just an obligation for her, I think she should be able to pass it without very special efforts, in fact, the effortless passing part was even my case, as math_scanner is a quite recent work.

As for the university-level math, this is a slightly more complicated field. Not that much, there are just more things in equations to pay attention to, their layout tends to be more sophisticated due to the usage of sums, integrals, etc. there are more special math symbols to take care of and finally, the amount of information contained in an equation or expression is typically much higher than in high-school.

MathML is a great way to deal with it, even though it requires some fiddling if one wants to write in AsciiMath and show in MathML, pandoc is quite good in this but it's a terminal app (so again, command line skills necessary, although there might be graphical wrappers, I did not check this option as terminal is faster for me in this case).

Best regards

Rastislav

Dňa 13. 7. 2021 o 22:52 Shail M via BlindMath napísal(a):
> Hi All,
>
> I have a basic question regarding understanding and solving problems in High School Math.
>
> Background:
> My daughter is vision impaired and currently studying in High School and will be learning Algebra 2 in coming year. She knows Braille but is learning Nemeth. Also, learning LaTeX. Apart from this, she knows and uses Equation Editor to some extent in Microsoft Word and has Braille display "Mantis Q40". She uses JAWS and also learning NVDA currently.
>
> While we are waiting for the session by Mr. Hussain, yet it will be happening in August which will late for us as school will open by August end. We are trying to figure out few things ahead of time. There are various aspects of learning Math and looking for feedback so that we can improve on the process.
> Below are the list of various actions that need to be performed:
>
>    *   Reading Math problems
>    *   Solving Math Problems (Show your work)
>    *   Reading concepts and problems/solutions over the web.
>
> The biggest problem is that there is no single software capable enough of handling Math content single handedly.
>
> For each of the action above, the approach we are taking:
>
>    *   Reading Math Problems:
>       *   The teacher gives assignment to all the students. Normally, it's given in Onenote but we can request the teacher to provide the Math content in Word using the Equation Editor. This way, JAWS can read the problem to her correctly. NVDA fails to read the content correctly written using Equation Editor. Math Player also doesn't read it correctly either. So, JAWS is winner here. Another solution is to use Immersive reader feature of Word.
>    *   Solving Math Problems:
>       *   Solve the problems in Word using the Equation Editor. Another solution is to use LaTeX in editor like Texmaker or TexWorks and generate a PDF with the question and corresponding solution. Both gets complex with lengthy equations.
>    *   Reading concepts and problems/solutions over the web:
>       *   Now, from the learning perspective, it is sometimes needed to search for the Math concept online and listen to the solution/approach. Most of the sites are inaccessible as they contains the Math content as image. Few of them uses MathJax/MathML and therefore, can be read. Now, here, JAWS fails to read correctly (in fact, it was consuming full CPU and very high memory as well) the Math content. NVDA over Firefox seems to be the best bet which was able to read the problem/solution correctly.
>
> The problem is that one need to be an expert in both JAWS and NVDA which is really tough as each comes with different set of commands. Also, Math Player requires 32 bit of Microsoft Word but then it also requires Math Type software to create Math content which adds additional dependency on external software.
>
> She has a TVI and other support in the class but looking forward to help her solve Math problems independently.
>
> Any ideas on simplifying the approach. Can you please share the approach taken which worked for you?
>
> Thanks for helping solving the mystery of learning Math.
>
> Thanks
> Shail
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