[BlindMath] Re? Current strategies regarding accessible mathematics

[Susan Jolly]

Hi Jonathan,

You are correct that I wrote about a US-centric approach; I also
intentionally referenced one of the best DSS organizations in the US.
However I think their guidance for educators is worth reading.  

Also I completely agree with you that a BVI student needs to be prepared to
be independent by the time they graduate. (Well so should all students.)
I've talked to too many VI teachers at specialized K-12 schools for the
blind who sadly learned that their top students had dropped out of college
because they didn't have the support they had been used to.

Independent does of course depend on the situation.  Back when I worked on
teams using Fortran to develop scientific modeling software based on
computational math we scientists didn't use LaTeX; that was something our
secretaries took care of. Also I was surprised to discover after the
competetive atmosphere of graduate school how much more effective it was to
be part of a team where different team members freely shared their expertise
with each other. Of course if one happens to be the only team member who
needs certain accomodations that definitely has to be taken into account.

I also  think it unfortunate not to have access to the best available
technology.  For example now that there are scanners that can scan entire
books without human intervention it makes me sad to think of someone
spending time to scan a book page by page. BTW I've just recently discovered
how much easier it is to  do online searches by using the very good
speech-to-text now available in browsers.

Cheers,
Susan