[nabs-l] math in college

[Jamie P.]

Hi Trin,
I'm excited to hear that you're going to be taking Math classes in college
and are taking the initiative to ask questions and prepare yourself ahead
of time. This is an excellent thing to do for any class in college that
you're not already experienced with taking.

I have a lot of experience with college level Math classes, both good and
bad. Math, by its very nature, is NOT inaccessible or out of reach or even
especially difficult. I can't stress that enough. But the way a university,
or even an individual professor decides to format the course can make or
break the experience for a student if you don't know what to expect. I've
seen way too many blind students turned off of Math (and consequently,
science) forever because of a series of bad experiences with a particular
Math class. I was almost one of these students, but now I'm pursuing a
highly math-intensive degree and can't get enough of the subject, in school
or just for fun.

In college Math classes, homework can be done in a few different ways. Most
often, your homework is going to be done through an online system.
Pearson's MyMathLab is a very popular example of this, but some schools
might have their own custom system for Math classes. I've even had one
class that used the school's regular course management system for Math
homework. When you do homework like this, you usually don't show your work.
Instead, you just enter your answer with an equation editor or choose from
multiple choices. Often, professors will advise you to still write out the
steps you used to solve these problems and save them so you can ask
questions later in class. Some of these systems give you multiple attempts
on homework assignments with a vast problem bank so you can get lots of
practice. Unfortunately, these systems are rarely (but sometimes) fully
accessible with screen readers, and (someone correct me if I'm wrong) I've
never heard of one being compatible with a braille display.

When you take a Math class that uses an inaccessible online homework
system, you should be able to expect your professor to work with you to
find a solution. Math is critical to your education, no matter what your
major, so expect no less. Some possible alternatives to consider are doing
homework out of a textbook. If your classmates are given multiple attempts
on their online homework, you should also expect the same number of
attempts on written homework. Most textbooks have enough exercises to make
this feasible. If your classmates get corrected immediately by the online
system, but you're doing textbook problems, you may be able to get a
solution manual that goes with your book. This will allow you to see
immediately if you got the right final answer like your peers can, but
you'll still have to figure out exactly how to get that answer by doing the
work yourself. Another way to get this benefit of your peers are receiving
immediate correction and multiple attempts is to turn in your assignment
early for grading, and re-doing the problems you get wrong. This, however,
will be very time consuming for both you and your professor. Working with a
reader to use the online system is another option. This gives you all the
advantages of using an online homework system. However, some drawbacks of
readers are having to coordinate with another person's busy life to get
your homework done, finding a reader who understands Math well enough to
know how to read it in a way that is most informative, and having to
compensate another person for their time. The last drawback should be
something your school is willing to address for you if they are choosing to
use inaccessible software for their courses.

Some professors may assign all of their homework out of a textbook, in
which case everyone is in the same paper boat, so to speak, and you
shouldn't have to worry much about leveling the playing field.

I am a Math tutor, and I specialize in working with blind college students.
I tell all of my students that Nemeth code is going to be their BFF in
college level Math. Braille literacy is critically important to any
student, but if you're going to be taking a Math class, I can't stress
enough how much you will benefit from having strong Nemeth skills. Math
isn't just about reading numbers. You need to be able to represent big
ideas concisely. Phrases like "is greater than or equal to...", "the
absolute value of...", "raised to the power of...", and so on need to be
clearly represented with as few symbols as possible, or you're going to
have mountains of paper to sort though just to get through one problem set.
Nemeth isn't perfectly concise, but it tries, and it does reasonably well.
Furthermore, you need to be able to manipulate symbols and numbers and
operations at will. Maybe the most gifted among us can do this kind of
thing in their heads, but there is a reason teachers want you to show your
work, and its because doing it in your head is going to lead to mistakes,
and headaches! There should always be someone in your school's disability
services department who is familiar with Nemeth and can transcribe your
work to a format your teacher will understand, and you should absolutely be
able to get a textbook for your class in Braille. Just be sure you give the
appropriate department ample notice because sometimes it takes a very long
time to obtain or create these books.

I don't recommend settling for an audio math book if you're taking any
class offered by your school's Math department (you *might be able to get
away with this in the Economics or Statistics departments). The readers of
these books aren't excellent, and it's difficult to see the whole equation
when you have to keep rewinding and listening to it in a linear fashion.

Computer skills are also pretty important, and if you're very comfortable
with a computer and a screen reader or braille display, you might benefit
from learning LaTeX (often pronounced La Tek). Put very simply (because I'm
running out of time), LaTeX is a way of coding Math on a computer for
writing websites and documents that contain equations. It makes all the
symbols look nice for sighted people, but it also means that we as blind
people can read and write these symbols. If you can learn LaTeX, it will
unlock some online resources that you can use to study Math and give you
the ability to express ideas with mathematical notation that your peers and
professors can read without waiting on someone to transcribe your braille
documents.

This is all I have time to write today, but I would be happy to help you
and answer any other questions you might have about studying Math in
college. E-mail me off-list if you'd like to talk about this more.

Best,

Jamie Principato
blackbyrdfly at gmail.com

On Sat, Mar 28, 2015 at 12:24 PM, Roanna Bacchus via nabs-l <
nabs-l at nfbnet.org> wrote:

> Hi Trin thanks for your message.  This is an awesome discussion topic for
> the list.  When I took my two economics classes in community college, they
> were both accessible were Jaws.  The exams were given in class so I took
> them at the Disability Support Sgvices office.  These courses involved a
> lot of reading from the textbook which I had on a Cd.  Any assignments that
> had to be turned in were emailed to the professor on the appropriate due
> date.
>
>
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