[Nfb-science] my update on reading equations

[Amy Bower]

Thanks to those of you that helped me get started with reading equations.
I'm finding that motivated young blind students can benefit greatly from all
the new techniques for accessibility that they learn from TVIs etc, but as
an adult professional scientist who is slowly losing vision, it's harder to
find this kind of information. I need my own TVI! 

 

Anyway, a few comments on what I've learned over the last few days.

 

I had the best luck with MathType's  Publish as Math Pages, then reading the
equations with Internet Explore and the MathPlayer add-on.  Pretty simple
and straightforward. Another lister suggested (off-list) creating a Daisy
book from the Word document, and I had less good luck with that, even though
there is a lot of information about doing this on the Design Science web
site. This method involved installing MathType, MathDaisy, the Save As Daisy
add-in for MS Office and of course a Daisy book reader that works well with
math. I got everything installed correctly, but then got errors when I tried
to save as a daisy book. I think this method has promise, but I'm not quite
there yet.

 

As for having a human reader.I can definitely appreciate the benefit of that
method, but when I'm studying a scientific paper with lots of complex
equations, it's going to take me a while to visualize and understand the
equation, and I may have to hear it several times over several days to get
the whole gist. I would rather do that independently on my own time.

 

And as to why I'm hesitant to join more lists.I don't feel right about
joining a list just to ask a question, then unsubscribing. But if I join the
list on a more permanent basis, there is a lot of filtering one seems to
have to do to get that small nugget of information that is valuable at the
moment. I just don't have that kind of time..I'm a professional scientist,
not a professional AT person! (smile)

 

Thanks again for the help.

Amy

 

 

Dr. Amy S. Bower

Senior Scientist

Department of Physical Oceanography

MS #21

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Woods Hole, MA  02543  USA

Voice: 508-289-2781

Email:  abower at whoi.edu

Fax:  508-457-2181

WWW:  http://www.whoi.edu/scientist/abower