[BlindMath] Inaccessible math books

Wed Mar 3 01:52:47 UTC 2021

were you at my college? The community college I went to was very large. The person who made my math accessible there was named Shawn. There were still problems with accessibility, especially concerning the professors, especially were programming was concerned. But when I went to a four-year university everything was much worse. They said they had Duxberry there but didn't know how to use it. When I would get code that they didn't even want to give me to begin with, I couldn't even use it because all of the buttons, form fields, and everything were unlabeled.

You had to go in manually, property by property and make sure that the text and the name property matched. I didn't have time to do that for all of them. And the professor definitely wasn'tGoi going to be doing that. I was stuck with software they didn't seem to have any type of documentation to use it with a screen reader. It really sucks trying to use it. By the end of my college experience I could barely function. I was in an independent study class where I was supposed to write a paper and normally I would've been able to do that without a problem, but by that point, I just couldn't. My paper really sucked, and I had to rally with every single thing I have left in order to improve it enough to be passable.

I'm still extremely messed up from being at college. I don't think I can ever go to school again. I've had enough.

The accessibility for programming was especially terrible. You first need a class to learn how to read Microsoft documentation as well as if they even have any for what you are looking for. Then you need a second class about how to use their software, which they make as unintuitive as possible. That goes for their traditional software, but for their programming software it is much worse. Then finally they can have a class about how to write the code, yet they decide to have all three of those classes in one class and surprise, it doesn't work. And also colleges need to stop teaching their students that it doesn't matter if the name and the text properties match. They are the reason that absolute Cooper eats work for a while, don't work, work for a while, don't work, forever. They won't ever just work and stay working. If you were on the phone voiceover does have a way that you can label everything and do the work for free that they should've done, but it only works on your phone, and everything gets lost during an update. I wish they would include a feature where you could do that but add it to someone else's phone. They added a new thing called screen recognition, but whenever I turn that on when something isn't working that makes things even worse so I don't know what that is supposed to be for. It doesn't recognize math either. It just gets everything and jumbles it all up. And it makes the keyboard disappear.

Sabra Ewing

> On Mar 2, 2021, at 5:51 PM, Sean Loraas via BlindMath <blindmath at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> 
> One of the most relevant and relatable discussions I've seen in my many
> years following and tapping the collective knowledge that is the BlindMath
> List. First, thank you for an engaging and honest discussion. I have never
> read opinions and experiences that are so exactly parallel to my own
> experience in the fight to provide accessible braille, screen reader and
> magnification accessible math content in the hostile front lines of the 7th
> largest community college in the country, creating all of our math
> materials in house, with a department of 2 full time employees. To address
> the fight with publishers, I will just fully concur with everything that
> has been said about the greed driven speed at which new editions are
> released, and the lack of cooperation we experience from publishers whose
> AccessText version is not only not accessible, but in some cases not even
> usable in the high paced conversion timelines that we must meet to provide
> students with timely materials. I am 100% sure that at least a dozen of us
> have created the same materials, simultaneously inventing a dozen wheels
> that have already been invented dozens of times before. When we only have
> the time and resources to make parts of a text accessible (only those parts
> that are assigned, and absolutely necessary) it makes it difficult to share
> the incomplete piecewise results with others. Much less have time to
> utilize the resources out there that are available for sharing our work. We
> would if we could. Almost every semester I am faced with a publisher file
> that is practically unusable, and must either take it back to images and
> use INFTYREADER, MATHPIX etc...or confront the publisher on several avenues
> for a number of weeks to finally get them to locate the "most accessible"
> version of the text.  I make it a point to try to engage the publisher with
> the reality that their lack of due diligence in providing the most usable
> versions of their textbooks has devastating consequences on the academic
> performance of  students. When they fail us, we fail our students, and when
> we fail our students it is they who feel the failure, even though it is not
> theirs. That is what keeps me fighting. When we manage against the odds to
> assemble a team for a student who each busts their butt to do their part,
> the student has the opportunity that we all take for granted: to finally
> prove to their peers, their loved ones, to themselves and the world, that
> they can succeed. All they need is access to the tools. They can also fail,
> but failure should be on them, and they should have access to the tools
> regardless of the outcome. I fight as hard for students who are headed for
> failure. They all have the right to access the tools everyone else has. It
> is we who must not fail in our fight, but it takes a team that spans
> departments, institutions and industries to make those successes. It should
> happen every time, but in reality it rarely comes together between
> publishers, case managers, faculty, accessible materials production,
> administrators and students. Any one of them can derail the student's
> success. The only one that has the option, the right to fail is the
> student.
> 
> Sorry, don't get me started...we fight more than we complain, so when we
> get a chance to speak out, WOW!
> 
> I will leave it at that. As far as the tools I find indispensable in
> converting math textbooks to accessible formats: it's inftyreader and
> mathpix, don't ask me to choose. I use them for different situations,
> because they both have different strengths. Inftyreader for when you have
> many pages of material and are able to meet the high quality standards of
> the software, it can perform beautifly. It breaks down as the quality gets
> worse and becomes less effective. It is also less useful for small amounts
> of material. That's what I need MathPix to do and what it's best for: low
> quality, small amounts of math. MathPix is great with bad quality scans,
> colors, weird fonts. I'm amazed at its ability to convert mixed text in
> math situations like words in fractions and subscripts, and it can work
> miracles with low quality. Mathpix is better for when I have a homework
> list that jumps through with just a few problems for each section.
> Inftyreader is better when I have to do most of the material, like all the
> problems, pages, or even just the odds (but only if the quality is there).
> 
> Another indispensable tool is Central Access Reader, for it's ability to
> make usable MathML without the need for plug-ins or special software. It's
> HTML is usable with default browser/screen reader combos on virtually any
> platform. I'm worried about it getting out of date and hope someone adopts
> it and brings it up to date. Because it's so easy to use: it converts word
> documents with either MathType or
> Equation editor (or mixed) and creates a screen reader accessible HTML file
> with embedded MathML equations that students have almost universal success
> reading. Now that JAWS reads MS Word with math, I send students both HTML
> for readability (they use the same shortcuts they use for surfing the web)
> and MS Word for it's editability...to type in answers and turn in as
> homework.
> 
> Sorry for such a long response but I hope that helps others make decisions
> on tools to use. Inftyreader is the most expensive, mathpix is $99/yr for 2
> people, Central Access Reader is free from Central Washington University.
> For Nemeth in a UEB context only Duxbury and the BANA template. For tactile
> graphics it used to be Tiger Designer, but a few upgrades ago, 3 or so
> years ago it developed a copy paste bug that made it unusable. Now it's
> photoshop and raised line graphics following BANA guidlines.  Good luck,
> thank you for all the help I've gotten over the years from BlindMath. Stay
> safe everyone.
> 
> [ACC logo]
> 
> *Sean Loraas*
> 
> *Accessibility Technician**|**Alternative Text and Media*
> 
> Eastview Campus
> 
> *Office: 2140*
> 
> *Phone/vm: (512) 223-5270 New!*
> 
> Email: sloraas at austincc.edu
> 
> * SAS STAFF USE ONLY:*
> 
> *SPRING 2021* *Alt-Text Request Form* <https://forms.gle/GnJMxfvpfjrbYizy8>
> 
> 
> *"No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars, or sailed to an
> uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit." **- Helen
> Keller*
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