[BlindMath] Braille Input with NVDA

[Michael Whapples]

My thinking on this may not be the way you were thinking. If the student 
does not want to learn two codes, then I feel UEB or Nemeth probably is 
not the way to go, instead learn ASCIIMath or a basic subset of LaTeX. 
As for the reading, MathCAT I am lead to believe can output in ASCIIMath 
or LaTeX, thus the single code to learn is ASCIIMath or LaTeX. This will 
be useful in so many other places (eg. online wikis and other tools) and 
will make the student more independent than relying upon UEB or Nemeth 
would (no need for specialist tools to be able to communicate).


If number of cells is a concern, then in 8-dot Braille ASCIIMath comes 
out really good, LaTeX not quite as good and UEB is pretty poor.


I know from my work with BrailleBlaster, transcribers seem to get a mind 
block on LaTeX and it has a reputation for being difficult. I have two 
responses to that: It can be difficult if you get into the full LaTeX 
system and documents from various sources as all sorts of commands and 
macros may be used, but a constrained subset is much easier. Also those 
who know Braille already have shown the ability to learn a pretty 
complicated encoding system in contracted UEB, so I feel its some mental 
block stopping learning LaTeX.


I know may not be the answer you wanted to hear. I am very much pro 
8-dot Braille and would be quite happy to see Braille codes simplified 
(eg. removing contractions). To me this feels such a logical way to go 
with computers and refreshable Braille displays where size isn't an issue.


Michael Whapples

On 28/04/2026 15:39, Matthew Horspool via BlindMath wrote:
> Hi all,
> A very rusty mathematician here! Nice to be part of the list.
> I'm supporting a high school student with NVDA and a braille display. We are based in the UK where the Student Annual edition of JAWS is not available, and the braille display cost them most of their budget for the year, so JAWS isn't an option even though we would like it to be.
> Sticking with JAWS for a moment though: there is a really neat feature in JAWS where you can be in a Word document, press a keystroke and end up in a math editor. The QWERTY keystroke is JAWS key+space followed by shift+equals, and braille display keystrokes are usually implemented. You can use the braille keyboard of your braille display to type in this window in either UEB or Nemeth and, when you press enter, the braille is converted into a Microsoft Word equation.
> We are looking for an equivalent option for NVDA. So far I have played with the MathCAT implementation in NVDA 2026.1 beta and it does a good job of outputting Word equations to a braille display correctly, but so far, the closest I've come to being able to input from a braille display is by brailing ASCII math and then using the context menu to switch that from Linear to Professional. The student is tech literate but not sold on math, so asking him to read math one way and write it another is not something we really want to suggest and to be honest, even if it's ultimately what we end up doing in this case, it's not a particularly good indictment for braille or NVDA and I think it's in our interest as a community to solve the problem properly.
> With this in mind, does anyone know of an existing solution or any work which is already being done to produce one?
> Thanks and best wishes,
> Matthew
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