[BlindMath] Braille Input with NVDA

Tue Apr 28 23:45:36 UTC 2026

Hello all,

I suspect my attitude to effective and efficient use of Braille in mathematical contexts is influenced by the timing of Braille becoming a useful tool for me personally. I therefore accept that there will be others whose experiences during their educational years had Braille before anything mathematically difficult, will be different.

Irrespective of the Braille code being used, my number one must have is certainty. I need to know that what I read is what sighted people will see and we'll have a common understanding.

To that end, I've investigated and abandoned all options which are experimental, under development, or waiting for developer interest. That includes Nemeth and for that matter UEB for math too. I have consciously and pragmatically migrated everything I do into a simpler way of working that minimises the pain I must endure. For me that is markdown with TeX for mathematical content.

I also think context matters. I have not created any MS Word or Power Point files in the last decade. I have nursed some legacy LaTeX documents along, and created a few more in order to meet publisher requirements. I must now admit to creating just one MS Excel file in 2025 as an experiment in self-awareness, just to see how bad my old Excel skills were.

I do watch what others are doing, just in case things change and somehow things improve enough to make me revisit my self-imposed choices. I doubt anyone would say that the state of Braille codes for maths are at an totally acceptable standard today. The problem of what gets put in vs what gets put out is just one area of shortcomings that if I'm honest, would seriously compromise my ability to be employed in my current job.

I am using Braille. 8 dot as it happens, because those \, {, and }, characters already mentioned do matter, as do other brackets and many other characters commonly found in programming languages including but certainly not limited to TeX.

Perhaps one of my greatest concerns is that learning any new code is hard if there is not a reliable reference point to explain the new bits. Learning two systems concurrently more than doubles down on this problem as I see it. A consequence of this learning challenge has been the plethora of individual solutions I've seen over the years. I'm sure many of us have done the personal style of notes in some context, and  even if it wasn't mathematical, it was not able to be shared.

The pragmatist in me says that using a tool that is widely understood means there is a wider pool of talent to call upon. For me, that means using TeX is a better option than investing in UEB or Nemeth for mathematical content. I suggest that society today is much more pragmatic and much less interested in sticking to the old ways. I foresee the eventual demise of Nemeth and for that matter even UEB for maths because the developer talent is not growing to meet the expanding set of needs. In my opinion, the tools that do not keep up will eventually become redundant.

I'm also happy to be proven wrong on the eventual demise of UEB and Nemeth for math, because it can only be avoided if the developers do put the necessary love into keeping both codes relevant to the next generation.

So, to the die hard Braille code for maths people, what is it that you think will ensure the ongoing relevance of codes which are only used by blind people?

-----Original Message-----
From: BlindMath <blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Bill Dengler via BlindMath
Sent: Wednesday, 29 April 2026 9:36 am
To: 'Blind Math list for those interested in mathematics' <blindmath at nfbnet.org>
Cc: codeofdusk at gmail.com; 'Neil Soiffer' <soiffer at alum.mit.edu>
Subject: Re: [BlindMath] Braille Input with NVDA

Doesn't the efficiency of ASCIIMath also depend on the underlying language table or Computer Braille standard used (i.e. some computer codes use French numbers, some use dropped a–j)?

Bill
-----Original Message-----
From: BlindMath <blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Neil Soiffer via BlindMath
Sent: Tuesday, April 28, 2026 2:31 PM
To: Blind Math list for those interested in mathematics <blindmath at nfbnet.org>
Cc: Neil Soiffer <soiffer at alum.mit.edu>
Subject: Re: [BlindMath] Braille Input with NVDA

Accepting Nemeth, UEB, and other braille codes is on the long range plans for MathCAT, but there is nothing scheduled to do that, so it won't happen anytime soon.

Michael's suggestion of using ASCIIMath is an option worth exploring. I wrote a paper (to be presented at ICCHP this summer) that looks at Nemeth, UEB, ASCIIMath, and LaTex. 8-dot ASCIIMath is very efficient (uses less braille cells) and thus might be faster to type and maybe faster to read.
There are all kinds of caveats to that later statement. For 6-dot codes, Nemeth is clearly the most compact, coming close to 8-dot ASCIIMath. 6-dot ASCIIMath and UEB are comparable in their efficiency.

Neil Soiffer

On Tue, Apr 28, 2026 at 12:29 PM Michael Whapples via BlindMath < blindmath at nfbnet.org> wrote:

> 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.
> shift+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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