[BlindMath] I'm blind! I love math! I want to go higher than high school geometry.

Fri Sep 15 14:03:53 UTC 2023

Reading your message brings me the thought that I always have:
we should have more accessible materials so blind people could study math
on their own.

A combination of html books + mathml + braille + described images should be
a good start.

Does anyone know if there is a project to adapt many math books like this?
Bookshare and some other options that I have seen are not universal; they
only work for the US and other countries would be left out. I think some
sort of accessible open wiki could be the way.

HEm sex., 15 de set. de 2023 às 05:08, Ray McAllister via BlindMath <
blindmath at nfbnet.org> escreveu:

> I don't find your email address anyhwhre,, but I am very good with Nemeth.
> I don't have an embosser of any type, so someone would have to emboss the
> things and Free-Matter-for-the-Blind them to me.  My email address is
> raymcal at att.net for private emails.
>
> Thanks,
> Ray.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: BlindMath [mailto:blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of David
> W.
> Farmer via BlindMath
> Sent: Friday, September 15, 2023 7:28 AM
> To: Ray McAllister via BlindMath
> Cc: David W. Farmer
> Subject: Re: [BlindMath] I'm blind! I love math! I want to go higher than
> high school geometry.
>
>
> Dear Ray,
>
> The PreTeXt protect, specifically David Austin and Rob Beezer,
> is currently working on an accessible version of the book
> Active Prelude to Calculus.  This includes Nemeth braille and
> accessible diagrams, with the diagrams having both a tactile
> representation and a description with words.
>
> The level of the mathematics seems appropriate for you, and I am
> sure they would be happy to have you as a proofreader.  You did
> not mention whether you can read Nemeth.  I am not sure what type
> of embosser these diagrams require.
>
> If you email me off-group, the four of us can talk about how
> to proceed.
>
> Regards,
>
> David
>
>
> On Fri, 15 Sep 2023, Ray McAllister via BlindMath wrote:
>
> > Hi, I'm totally blind, and have loved math and been good at math since my
> > father started teaching me when I was 3 and 4 years old.  I could do
> > long-hand division problems in my head at age 6.  I won math competitions
> in
> > high school.  One day, bored, in church, in high school, I figured out,
> in
> > my head, how to find the 5 5th roots of a number, using intuition,
> > completing the square, and the quadratic formula to break x^5 = y^5 down.
> > Last year, when I had Covid, I wanted to make sure nothing was happening
> to
> > my brain, so I started playing with magic square patterns, with inner
> magic
> > squares, a border square, basically.  I got up to 10x10 on my own, and
> then
> > wrote a computer program to take it up to 1000x1000 which means that I
> have
> > this Excel spread sheet here with a list of numbers from 1 to 1 million
> that
> > is a magic square, all rows, columns, and diagonals adding up to the same
> > number, with about 40,000 smaller magic squares inside it.
> >     My path has been rather weird.  While I'm as good at math as many
> > people are socially, soecially, I'm as dyslexic as most people seem to be
> > with math.  Since higher math wasn't as accessible, as my small high
> school
> > didn't offer trig and precalculus, and things weren't as accessible, I
> ended
> > up following another passion, ministry, and ultimately got a pH.D. in Old
> > Testament, helping code advanced Hebrew symbols into Braille, which I was
> > part of the team that won the 2016 Bolotin award from the NFB.  Well, my
> > Ph.D. is getting me nowhere now, and my mind, at 48, is beginning to turn
> > toward math again, if anything, for a hobby.  I was able to go onto Khan
> > Academy and go through Trig, and while I can't see the diagrams, I was
> able
> > to figure out a number of proofs in my head.  I've had to get my student
> > loans forgiven, so I'm not allowed to take out any more federal loans,
> and
> I
> > wouldn't anyway for any more training.  I'm still wondering what kind of
> > path there could be for me in math, for fun, career, whatever.  I can't
> > afford any of those fancy graphical embossers.  I'd love to go at least
> > through Calculus, somehow.  I just work so naturally with numbers.  I
> feel
> > so held back by the world that just never seems to move fast enough for
> me,
> > if anyone out there understands.
> >
> > I have, though, been thinking of a way higher math, at least, at times,
> > could be described in text for someone who is blind and doesn't have all
> the
> > fancy equipment.  Sy lrsdy, for trig, has anyone played around the
> Cartesian
> > coordinate plane?  If you don't know how that works by the time you reach
> > trig, you're in a lot more trouble than missing triangle images.
> Basically,
> > you could say,  We have a triangle, point A is on the origin.  Point B is
> at
> > (4, 0) and point C is at (1, 7).  Segment a is the line hooking points B
> and
> > C.  Segment b hooks points A and C.  Segment c hooks points A and B.  You
> > can do all kinds of things with this, including run a line segment d down
> > from point C, straight vertically to the X axis to split this into 2
> right
> > triangles.  You can, then, write out proofs for things, and the blind
> reader
> > need only remember this diagram.  I wrote out a proof for the Law of
> Sines
> > using this system, and a couple more points and line segments I had to
> come
> > u pwith on Line c. I haven't found any place with Braille books on this
> > stuff I can access.  Of course, if someone's special ed office hired a
> > transcriber to transcribe a math book, has anyone thought of finishing
> the
> > job and getting it in the National Library Service once the blind student
> is
> > done with the material?
> >
> > I welcome discussion on this.
> >
> > Write soon,
> > Ray McAllister.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
> > www.avast.com
> >
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