[Nfb-science] procuring physics textbooks

[Daniel]

Dear list members,

  I think I may have posted something here within the last year 
or so about having materials procured for a physics course.  In 
case some of you don't remember, I am Daniel Gillen, a rising 
college junior majoring in physics at Haverford College.  For the 
upper-level course on classical mechanics I will take this fall, 
there are two different textbooks which the course will be using.  
In the past, the Office of Disabilities Services tried to 
organize all of my materials in-house; this was not shown to be 
workable when last year's fall physics textbook, being in Word 
documents with math entered through MathType, returned either 
error messages or false positives throughout the book.  Since 
then, they were able to farm out the previous semester's text in 
Braille hard copy, which made it more straightforward for showing 
matrices, as well as the possibility of diagrams integrated into 
the book.  This only helped some, but since finding equations 
required constant thumbing through pages of various volumes.  
They are now deciding to have this coming semester's books both 
in hard copy, as well as in an electronic text-based format to 
make it possible for me to search more efficiently while 
studying.
  As of now, I am very concerned about the format of the 
electronic textbook.  Unfortunately, it sounded like the same 
company that was transcribing the book in hard copy could not 
also distribute the electronic Braille files of the book due to 
copyright laws.  Also, it appears that a different company will 
try to procure Word documents with the math notation in MathML, a 
form which only a computer can make sense of.  The main issue 
here is that I will need to have two Braille-readable formats for 
each book (one hard-copy and one electronic Braille which I can 
read on my BrailleNote Apex's Braille display).  In doing so, any 
conversion of the electronic files to Braille-ready format should 
result in a finished product with as few errors or ambiguities as 
possible.  Yet I've been told by the head of the Office of 
Disability Services after much conversation that I could just as 
well look up the ambiguous/erroneously translated expression(s) 
in the hard copy when I'm studying.
  I apologize for the ramblings-on about this, but I would like 
to know what some of the viable options are/have been.  This is 
for those of you like me who are proficient Braille readers and 
use a Braille note-taker in STEM subjects.  I wonder if there are 
others in this situation who use electronic Braille versions of 
STEM textbooks rather than audio options.  After all, despite my 
complete lack of vision, I am, as some might argue, a visual 
learner.  I know I may be writing this after all of the book 
orders have been made, but please let me know what works/has 
worked best for you in terms of getting through these sorts of 
courses.  This will hopefully give me something to look back at 
for future courses as I progress through the latter half of 
college.

Thank you,
Daniel