[BlindMath] Inaccessible math books

Wed Mar 3 17:50:19 UTC 2021

Sabra,
Yes, I remember you, Sabra. I'm sorry to hear how awful your college
treated you and denied you your basic right to access the tools that the
other students were using. It sounds like they weren't fulfilling their
responsibility under the law to make every effort accommodate you and find
ways to make the course accessible,  therefore  violating their own college
policies, as well as federal and probably state disability laws by
discriminating based on your disability. If this is ever going to improve,
and if you want students who come after you at that institution to have a
better experience it's important to at least to file a formal grievance
with your school, to document that you were denied an equal opportunity to
experience the courses as your peers who were sighted. The course was
designed and used software and materials that deny access to individals
with visual disabilities.  Without a grevience, formal complaint, or law
suit there may be no record of this violation if your rights and therefore
no pressure for the college to change. Furthermore, students who are
treated the same after you cannot site your case to back up their own
complaint if there is no record that you had issues with  the way you were
treated. It may seem like it's just more trouble to go through in an
already awful experience, but at the very least I would encourage you to
look up the student complaint process at the school and fill out a
complaint to document your experience, so at least there is a record of it
that can be used by other students. This can help in showing that there is
a pattern of discrimination if your case is not an isolated incident and
there are others. You were treated wrongly, and the failure of your college
was forced to become your failure, which wasn't your fault, you could have
thrived if the tools were accessible. That wasn't your responsibility, but
now you have the responsibility to file a complaint so at least there is a
chance your terrible experience will have an impact on helping things to
change for other students whose rights are also violated. I'm so sorry you
didn't have a better experience. There is still an opportunity for you to
speak up that what you experienced was a violation of your rights,
discrimination based solely on your blindness.

I'm hoping those  here on this list can point Sabra to some resources to
help her document the problems she experienced with her institution. Good
luck going forward, I hope you can turn that unfair situation around and
find a way to make things better for yourself and others. That's the only
way to turn this deep rooted bias and discrimination into a win for
yourself. Document it so it can be a stepping stone to real change. You
don't have to fix it, but don't let your experience be lost, let there at
least be a record of it that can be found and used to build a case for
change. I hope you see a little hope in that, because I don't think most
people understand how devastating and dehumanizing it is on you, which is
why ADA and Section 508 must be enforced, because that is supposed to
protect you. When we fail to each do our part it results in terrible tragic
experiences for real people, with real lives.  Hang in there Sabra. Stay
safe! Watch the list for responses with some more resources to help you.

No barriers left standing, untill then, we cannot rest.

Sean Loraas

 Accessibility Technician
 Alt. Text & Media
   Austin Community College
   Eastview Campus
    Office: 2140

(Sent from my smart phone, please forgive any typos I failed to catch.)

On Tue, Mar 2, 2021, 7:52 PM Sabra Ewing <sabra1023 at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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