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

Fri Sep 15 23:45:07 UTC 2023

That's a very good point and potentially a very good compromise. Getting
graphics to emboss well has been an area of research for over a decade.
Getting the detail level right, along with keeping the braille labels from
interfering with the diagram are hard, but by hand and automatically. There
are interesting technologies that solve some of the problems by having a
touchpad behind the graphics or having a camera mounted above them so the
labels can be spoken or more information given by speech.

Perhaps David Farmer can comment on how much effort the people producing
the PreTeXt books have put into making the diagrams come out well in
braille.

Neil Soiffer

On Fri, Sep 15, 2023 at 2:50 PM Ray McAllister <raymcal at att.net> wrote:

> The Braille display won’t handle 2d diagrams, is the issue.  Now, there is
> this in-between option:  Have an embossed supplement which would have all
> the 2d diagrams, but nothing else.  And it would all be labeled.  So, you
> read the main e-book on a Braille display, and then it would say, See
> Figure 2-8, and then you’d open the embossed book, Figure 2-8 and study
> it.  But the supplement would only be the diagrams.
>
>
>
> Ray.
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* Neil Soiffer [mailto:soiffer at alum.mit.edu]
> *Sent:* Friday, September 15, 2023 5:21 PM
> *To:* Blind Math list for those interested in mathematics
> *Cc:* Ray McAllister
> *Subject:* Re: [BlindMath] I'm blind! I love math! I want to go higher
> than high school geometry.
>
>
>
> While I'm sure having the embossed book would be great, as I'm sure you
> know, the book would be huge. It would likely be a bit expensive to emboss.
> Your school might pay for it though.
>
>
>
> If you have a refreshable braille display, you can read the book,
> including the math in Nemeth on the braille display. You'll get the best
> quality Nemeth if you use NVDA with the MathCAT addon. If you are a JAWS
> user, the current beta of JAWS includes an option to use MathCAT, so you'll
> get more accurate Nemeth if you turn that option on. Even if you don't, the
> Nemeth will probably be understandable even if it doesn't meet the spec in
> some cases.
>
>
>
> Math is fun and with the work of the PreTeXt project, there is a lot more
> that is accessible than there used to be. Good luck,
>
>
>
> Neil Soiffer
>
>
>
>
>
> On Fri, Sep 15, 2023 at 5:08 AM Ray McAllister via BlindMath <
> blindmath at nfbnet.org> wrote:
>
> 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.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
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