I don't think that challenges of representing maths and other
symbolic notation have been solved by any single technical fix yet.
There are people actively working on it though.
There are methods based on reading Latex (maths document markup),
MathML and Nemeth Braille (USA) or British maths Braille.
There is some progress with MathSpeak http://www.gh-mathspeak.com/
and the Infty Project http://www.inftyproject.org/en/index.html
A good discussion list for this is BlindMath
http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/blindmath
The problem for students is that they need tools to read maths, to
write maths and to do the stages of working out a problem. Software
such as Maple can be used for some parts, MathML on web pages can be
screen read, but at the moment there is not enough inter-operability
between the different solutions to give a blind student true
independence from needing a mathematically competent helper or human
readers and scribes.
Mary
At 10:28 AM 7/13/2006, you wrote:
>Dear All
>
>Does anyone know of a solution to the problem of screen readers
>being able to read the Mathematical formula contained in journal
>articles. Screen readers have difficulty with the formula as it is
>in effect a different language than written or spoken English; so a
>formula such as X2 would be read by the screen reader as "X 2",
>rather than "X Squared" giving it a different meaning.
>
>We know that with Kurzweil 3000 you can edit the underlying text to
>write out, in prose, the equation. But of course this would need
>the intervention of someone with a good mathematical knowledge to
>manually edit each article whenever a person with a visual
>impairment wanted to read it.
>
>Is there a technical solution that would allow greater independence
>for the student such as software that would understand a
>mathematical formula when it is scanned in?
>
>Thank you
>
>Gregor
>
>************************
>Gregor Thomson
>IT Officer (Electronic Information Support and Training)
>Imperial College London Library
>South Kensington campus
>SW7 2AZ
>Phone: 0207 594 1565
>Internal 41565
>Fax: 0207 584 3763
>e-mail: [log in to unmask]
>
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