[nabs-l] Making college Biology and math accessible?

[Miranda]

Hi Ignasi,
Thanks so much! We are reading through the LateX installer PDF file.
I'll be curious to experiment with this, and to also explore numerical ways of solving problems usually solved graphicly.
Thanks again, and have a great day!

In Christ, Miranda

-----Original Message-----
From: Ignasi Cambra <ignasicambra at gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, December 21, 2010 2:23 AM
To: National Association of Blind Students mailing list <nabs-l at nfbnet.org>
Subject: Re: [nabs-l] Making college Biology and math accessible?

LateX is similar to a programming language. It basically allows you to type any scientific text using plain text, and there are several tools which will allow you to compile the code and build a PDF file (or something else) which a sighted person can look at. Equations and other things will look graphically perfect, pretty much as if it was a textbook.
I would say most of the time you just have to understand what you're doing, instead of just doing whatever the professor tells you to do in order to solve problems. Especially in lower level math classes in college they tend to simplify things a lot... Whenever you see this, you do this and you'll get the right answer. I had taken lots of calculus in high school so when I got to college classes I already had my way of doing things. But you can always ask the professor to help you find numerical ways of doing many things. An example which comes to my mind is some simple integrals which can be calculated by figuring out an area under the curve. Sometimes that's very simple, but if one knows how to integrate an equation directly, then there's no need of graphs. In any case, I am not saying that graphs are completely useless and sometimes you will have no choice and you will have to use them. And sometimes, they will be very useful for blind people also. Sighted people use graphs for many purposes and we still need to be proficient at understanding them, because sometimes it's the only way either because problems are designed to be resolved graphically or for several other reasons. I only described my way of working, although I am sure many blind people out there enjoy working with graphs much more than I do. Basically I have no problem with them, but if I can do things without, I do.

Ignasi
On Dec 20, 2010, at 4:46 PM, Miranda wrote:

> Hi IC,
> How can I determine the numerical formulas for the problems in which the professor gives the graphical solutions?
> I  actually won't start college until next Fall, so I'll look into the software you mentioned.
> I was never too good at reading graphs in high school, so it could be interesting to try and figure them out in my mind. I've been Blind since birth, so have no rememberance of visual representations.
> Thanks, and have a great week!
> 
> In Christ, Miranda
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ignasi Cambra <ignasicambra at gmail.com>
> Sent: Monday, December 20, 2010 3:28 PM
> To: National Association of Blind Students mailing list <nabs-l at nfbnet.org>
> Subject: Re: [nabs-l] Making college Biology and math accessible?
> 
> For the math class, try to make sure to find a way to show your work in print to the professor. I would suggest using LateX but if you haven't used it in the past it might be a little hard to learn it on time for your class if it's starting this spring semester. Although now that I think about it, many classes end up making you choose an answer on multiple choice exams, so as long as you can do stuff in your mind you should be OK. Also, when it comes to geometry, trigonometry, calculus and anything that requires graphical representations, you will have to see how much of it you can just imagine in your head. I have completed five calculus classes in college without using a single graph other than the ones I had to use to answer particular exam questions, because I have a good idea in my mind of how these things are supposed to look. Also, college professors too often will give you graphical methods to solve problems, because that's what works best for most students. But many times the same things can be done numerically, which is much faster for me because I can do it in my mind or by typing my calculations on the computer if they are too complex. I am not a math major and only took the whole calculus sequence for fun, so I don't know what else you can find in math college classes. In any case, I never tried to get exactly what other students get in terms of materials. If there are a bunch of graphs that I know I won't use, why bother?
> Just my opinion...
> 
> IC
> On Dec 20, 2010, at 12:14 PM, Miranda wrote:
> 
>> Hi,
>> I have no useable vision, and I'll be taking a Biology course in college. I'll also be taking a math course that covers Algebra, geometry, trigonometry and Pre-calculus.
>> Any ideas on how my professors and I can make these courses accessible?
>> Thanks in advance, and have a great week!
>> 
>> In Christ, Miranda
>> 
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