[BlindMath] Transitioning from Completely Visual Math to Less Visual Math

[Łukasz Grabowski]

Nicholas, about textbooks: you probably know this, but just in case: if
you have a refreshable Braille display then  books which are  in mathml
can be (in principle) read on such a braille display using automatic
transcription. However I don't own a braille display so I don't know
what is the quality of transcription. 

However, the piece of software which does the transcription, called
mathplayer (which works for example with nvda), is able  also to read
mathml aloud - this I have checked, and it does a fairly reasonable
job, at least with simple maths, so presumably Braille transcription
is also not too bad.

You can see an example of lecture notes in mathml for a  basic
statistics course at my institution here:
http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/staff/grabows1/accessible/math104/Math104.tex/index.html

(please note that all figures and most of the tables were removed from
those lecture notes, so some parts might be confusing (the tables
which were not removed are likely not very accessible solely with a
screen reader - sorry!). If you
want to test mathplayer, then more involved mathematical formulas start
to appear in chapter 2)

Best,
Łukasz



On Thu, 30 Mar 2017 17:39:32 -0400
Nicholas J via BlindMath <blindmath at nfbnet.org> wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> Thank you for the response about the Sensational Blackboard and
> convention. Is math homework done with similar technology? If
> textbooks are to be translated to braille, I was told before that the
> braille book could take up multiple shelves of a bookshelf since it
> would be so big. Is that still true at the present?
> 
> Thank you,
> Nicholas
> 
> On Tue, Mar 28, 2017 at 11:21 PM, Nicholas J <314nick15 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> 
> > Hello,
> >
> > I’m considering doing a Master’s in statistics, but I do not want
> > to go back to the technology that I used before. I used a cctv to
> > view the board and zoomtext as a screen magnifier. All the cctvs I
> > have used have still left me not able to see what was happening in
> > most of my classes before and zoomtext made things slower for me
> > because of so much magnification. Right now I am transitioning to
> > using Jaws for the computer, but I am not sure what to do for
> > things like the boards in classes, writing, and things like that. I
> > don’t write notes because I am slow at it since I have to write big
> > and I usually still can’t understand what I wrote because of how
> > quickly I wrote it and how unreadable it is. I have been looking at
> > doing things in braille, but am not sure if that is the best way to
> > go. I thought it might take a lot of time also to learn it. I still
> > think it may be helpful in some situations (maybe graphics which I
> > could almost never discern correctly the more complicated they
> > got). I have been reading through all the posts here about latex
> > and having Jaws read them and other kinds of technologies, but I am
> > not sure what kinds of technology are best for the transition of
> > doing everything visually to doing things less visually. My vision
> > has always stayed the same, but the field I am working in is
> > statistics and it gets very small and specific for notation and
> > everything. Main Question: What technology and how can I do math
> > more electronically and less visually? I am learning Jaws, braille,
> > and Kurzweil.
> >
> >
> > Thank you,
> >
> > Nicholas
> >  
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