[BlindMath] Fields not yet accessible.

[Daniel Gillen]

This all sounds interesting, Ray! I believe that if multi-line braille displays such as the Monarch and Dot Pad (along with some lower-cost successors) become more widespread, these last frontiers might prove accessible and engaging after all. I graduated from college with a double major in physics and music almost ten years ago, back when 2D braille and tactile graphic displays were being dreamed up and researched, with myself and other STEM students who read braille being stuck in the era of bulky multi-volume textbooks. Yes, AI tools have great promise in being able to describe diagrams in natural language, but when things become so complicated that the descriptions are too long-winded to process efficiently, having tactile graphics or 3D prints would put students who are blind on a more level playing field with their sighted peers. That said, I was fortunate enough to receive a Monarch as part of a teacher training organized by APH about six months prior to the device "taking flight". I've been using it to teach students at the music school that I'm now working at about braille formatting and even the basics of print notation for those who are used to reading braille. I (and maybe a lot of us on this list) wish we had access to one of these tools at any level in our education, both for STEM and humanities subjects alike. In my spare time I look back at some math concepts that I learned in high school and college, trying to recreate graphs of physics functions using the built-in graphing calculator. I even pursue my lifelong passion for geography and maps by downloading and zooming into maps of countries and region, revealing internal borders and other details that were previously inaccessible to me. All of this without using a single sheet of embosser paper or waiting for the printer to crank out the material in the first place.

So I feel strongly that, given the right tools and techniques, just about any STEM or related field can be made accessible to those without eyesight. It may take various kinds of ingenuity and research, but just because it may seem  insurmountable now doesn't mean it's actually impossible.

Best,
DanielOn Jun 12, 2026 5:59 PM, Ray McAllister via BlindMath <blindmath at nfbnet.org> wrote:
>
> Hi,so now I'm wondering if there are any mathematical fields/disciplines
> that just don't really work well for the blind.  Maybe something like
> typology, or some really visual field, that maybe someone can do it to pass
> college and get the degree, but it's really a pain. 
>
> On another note, I wonder if anyone has played around with this idea: but
> sometimes there are graphical diagrams that don't make sense to me being
> blind, but I've been known to have Chat GPT describe them by using
> coordinates, X/Y, so we have A at (3,4) and b at (-2,5) even if there really
> aren't those points numbered that way, just an estimate so I can know what
> to picture, and I am able to grasp what's happening.  For people who don't
> have an embosser, I wonder if this might be a way to get around such things.
>
> Ray.
>
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