[BlindMath] TeX Hour: FRIDAY 5 Nov: Office of Disability Services and LaTeX developers

[Jonathan Fine]

Hi

NOTE: The ad hoc reformatting of mathematical content is a very important
part of ODS support. Teacher authored materials, including exams and tests,
are particularly important. Having more and better well understood
accessible authoring tools would help greatly.

NOTE: This week's TeX Hour is FRIDAY. The UK clocks moved back to GMT last
weekend.

FRI 5 Nov: 6:30 to 7:30pm UK(=GMT) time. UK time now: https://time.is/UK.
Title: Office of Disability Services and LaTeX developers
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/78551255396?pwd=cHdJN0pTTXRlRCtSd1lCTHpuWmNIUT09

I'm delighted to have Steve Jacobs returning as our special guest. To
accommodate him we've moved the TeX Hour to FRIDAY (and still 6:30 to
7:30pm UK time). He'll talk about Office of Disabilities Service [ODS]
professionals who work in STEM.

This TeX Hour is an opportunity for TeX users and developers to learn
something about the ODS STEM professionals from a person who supplies and
supports software they use, and who has much personal contact with them.
And some ODS professionals attend the TeX Hour.

Many colleges and universities in the USA have an ODS. The professionals in
the ODS have varied duties, most of which are not math. They are student
focussed, mainly on individual students. ODS professionals help students
with disability progress and successfully acquire STEM knowledge.

The ad hoc reformatting of mathematical content is a very important part of
ODS support. Teacher authored materials, including exams and tests, are
particularly important. Having more and better well understood accessible
authoring tools would help greatly.

Steve will describe the STEM workflow in ODS, and some of the
inefficiencies in the present process. Here's a video showing one of the
tools (InftyReader from Steve's IDEAL Group) in use.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvvHi023U7Y

In the longer term an online forum for sharing experience and information
between ODS users and TeX developers would be most helpful.  It helps for
users and developers to share information about the software that connects
them.

Videos for last week's TeX Hour "A brief introduction to Portable TeX
Documents"
will appear tomorrow at:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLw1FZfIX1w7hjY18EEa4f3nS6d25CUPU4

Happy TeXing

Jonathan