[Pibe-division] Nemeth and refreshible braille solutions

[Greg Aikens]

Hello colleagues,
I am looking for ways to produce Nemeth braille on an electronic
display in real time.  The para I have working with an elementary
student to provide access to her math class pointed out how much more
effective it would be to be able to just put the braille under my
student's fingers than trying to sneak in descriptions of what the
teacher has written in between teacher explanations.  The student has
some trouble listening to the two voices at once and I want to make
sure she can listen to as much of her math teacher explaining as
possible.  When the teacher's provide materials ahead of time, we are
able to accomplish this by embossing them in hard copy braille.
However, most often examples are made up on the fly in response to
student questions or difficulties.

I thought this sounded like a wonderful idea and wanted to ask if
anyone else is doing something similar.  We were thinking of something
like pairing the student's braillenote to an ipad or laptop and having
the para type the math in as the teacher writes it on the board.  I'm
not sure what tool we would use to input the math symbols though.  As
far as I know, most math symbols would be automatically rendered into
computer braille instead of Nemeth.

I suppose that Duxbury might do this.  However the para is not yet
fluent enough in Nemeth to use 6 key entry on the fly.

Does anyone know of any tools that will accomplish what we are trying to do?

Thanks,
Greg