[Nfb-science] RE MasteringPhysics with JAWS

[Chelsea Cook]

Hi Tammy,
If you need more info, I would be glad to email off list.

My relations with MasteringPhysics have been less than cordial. I had
to use it last year and am *so* glad I am through in my upper level
classes. The main problems relate to web technology in general, and no
particular screen reader. For the numerical questions, the "box" is
embedded in a Flash system, so forms mode cannot be accessed at all
because the box is not recognized as an active html element.

There are other problems that one would expect such as navigation and
no support for figures, very little for equations, but the answering
system is the main glitch. To borrow from AppleVis: "The site is
somewhat accessible, but not enough to make it usable."

I happen to be a Physics major and would love to go into more detail
of how we got around this problem. It's not fun, from a student's
perspective. My professor and I have contacted Pearson about this,
with no response.

I hope your physics class can go well, anyway. I would suggest you
avoid MasteringPhysics for homework, as there are certainly other ways
to solve problems. Failing that, come talk to me off-list and I can
help you out. This is not a reflection of physics at all! as a
science, or how problems are supposed to be done. Simply a system that
doesn't work for us blind folks.

Best Regards,
Chelsea
Chelsea Cook

Virginia Tech 2015; Physics Major
cook2010 at vt.edu
"I ask you to look both ways.  For the road to a knowledge of the
stars leads through the atom; and important knowledge of the atom has
been reached through
the stars."
Sir Arthur Eddington, British astrophysicist (1882-1944), Stars and
Atoms (1928), Lecture 1