[BlindMath] Inaccessible math books

[Michael Evers]

Hi,

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Bookshare does not currently offer
math textbooks in the MathML Format.  Trying to find a vender with the
expertise to perform transcription services for converting math textbooks
into MathML is like pulling teeth.  The only solution is for you to try to
learn MathML and perform the conversions yourself.
	There are software programs that can do a lot of the work for you, but you
will still have to go through all of the mathematical expressions to make
sure that all of the transcriptions were performed correctly.  That task in
and of itself can take several months depending on how much time and human
resources you have at your disposal.  Most likely, converting these
textbooks into MathML is nothing more than a pipe dream until this pandemic
is over and venders make themselves available again.
	Good luck getting the textbook publishers to convert their materials into
MathML for you.  That task is even more impossible to accomplish, because
they don't care.  I know that I have tried getting textbooks converted into
MathML for one of my engineering students and have not been able to find any
venders willing or able to help my university at all.  Every vender that I
have reached out to, including UC Boulder and Georgia Tech Center for
Instructional Design have all said they do not have the human resources to
convert textbook materials into MathML, because of the COVID-19 pandemic,
but if they have materials in their repositories, they would gladly let me
have access to them.  The problem is, my student's professors are requiring
textbooks that are currently not in these vender's repositories.  So, we're
back to square one.  Good luck trying to find these resources.  Let us know
how it works out.

Michael

-----Original Message-----
From: Akashdeep Bansal <akashdeep.bansal4 at gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, March 1, 2021 1:20 AM
To: Blind Math list for those interested in mathematics
<blindmath at nfbnet.org>
Subject: Re: [BlindMath] Inaccessible math books

You can check on Bookshare.

I-Stem (http://www.istemai.com/) provides service for conversion of
documents into accessible formats. We also fixes the bugs through manual
corrections and can provide output in mml. Pls let me know if you are
interested.

On 3/1/21, Kellee Sanchez via BlindMath <blindmath at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> Hello! We have a student in higher level math class, aerodynamics to
> be exact, and the online book is not accessible. There are many people
> working on a viable avenues to get the student their book before the
> semester ends, but it is looking bleak. Does anyone have suggestions
> how to get the book into MML? Also, what can I do when this occurs
> again? Who can I contact? The book is Fundamentals of Aerodynamics 6th
> ed. By JD Anderson. Thank you for any assistance you can give!
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--
Thanks and Regards
Akashdeep Bansal
Research Scholar (PhD)
Amar Nath and Shashi Khosla School of Information Technology Indian
Institute of Technology Delhi Hauz Khas, New Delhi 110016 INDIA
web: http://www.cse.iitd.ac.in/~akashdeep/
<http://web.iitd.ernet.in/~anz168049/>