mrhunsaker
WenweiDo I know any screen reader users who have successfully completed advanced math coursework? If so, I would like to meet with you. Boosts requested
miki@wenwizzle Not in the US, so not sure how applicable my advice is, but me
@miki Very applicable. I have the software needed to read math notation, plus I'm learning LaTex. My issue is that I'm getting increasingly lost the more complex and involved a math equation becomes. Some tips or workflows on how to deal with such things would be really helpful. So far, I've placed reference material and the equation as my table titles, I have numbers and notations I'll frequently use placed at the top or bottom of the column. This eliminates my need to alt-tab all the time, in addition to keeping track of as few place markers as possible so I'm more likely to keep things in my head.
@wenwizzle I usually found it helpful to have one or two scratchpad editor windows open. I didn’t mind alt-tabbing, in fact, I’d rather alt tab through three or so documents than have to constantly move up and down in a single one. My main window was the editor with the file where I was doing the exercise. My workflow would usually be something like “copy the whole equation, paste the copy immediately below, do a few small modifications to the pasted copy itself, copy the modified equation, paste it further down and so on.” That way, the rendered PDF output looked as if the equation was solved by a sighted person, with all the steps neatly shown. If I realized I made a mistake, I could always go a few steps up, delete the erroneous lines and start over from the point where I thought I was still correct. I recommend getting an editor that copies the current line when you press ctrl+c and have nothing selected. I used to swear by EdSharp, but I'm sure there are others that have this functionality. If an exercise was long and involved, I would usually keep a second editor window / tab open for keeping the most important results and formulas that I have already calculated, things I thought I'd need further on. This saved me from having to go up and down all the time if I wanted to look things up. There was sometimes a third window with some general formulas / notes for a given area of math, I usually had the formulas well named, so I used ctrl+f generously to find anything I needed. For reading math on the web, both MathJax and MathPlayer have features to change what engine they use to render expressions for a screen reader. The MathJax settings are in the context menu for a math expression, it doesn't always open on the first try, you might need some mouse-routing clicks, the MathPlayer settings are in the control panel. The default engine tries to interpret everything it sees, so it reads "int" as "integral", "lim" as "limit", "right arrow" as "to" and so on. Once you get to a certain level, this is often wrong, so fiddling with these settings might make sense. Wikipedia also lets you get LaTeX output, though you need to get a wikipedia account for that to work. Those aren't easy to make, there's an image-only captcha and a special captcha-free form for the blind which requires manual approval, and that process took months for me. Speaking of sources, Paul's notes at Llamar university are excellent for everything up to calculus 2, linear algebra and differential equations, same for Openstax. Those resources are free, text-only, have accessible math and good alt descriptions. If you go higher than that, you're on your own, but for subjects that advanced, the stuff you can find on Google is usually pretty good and unlikely to be commercial SEO spam from content factories.
Xdej@miki
Thanks for recommendong Paul's notes at Llamar university to learn undegraduate #mathematics https://tutorial.math.lamar.edu/ to #screenreader users.
Do you recommand any book or other resource for a screen reader user (not me) to learn a programming language?
@wenwizzle
Adam Shostack 
naught101@wenwizzle I do, but they're not on fedi yet, will send them a link
Kofu has moved@wenwizzle @limitedmage might know
Helle, Queen of Dissociation 
@wenwizzle I am going to try and get in touch with someone I knew, but I think they mostly used braille and read raw LaTeX to deal with math formula. (University level)
0xC0DEC0DE07EA@wenwizzle oh no, I’m just now realizing how painfully backwards it would be to have a screen reader go through a standard format math-heavy text.
“<massive Greek-inflected formula> where tau is the space time, capital V dot sub t is the volumetric flow rate at time t…”
Or that could be me with a deficit of working memory and a lifelong dependence on sight and continual cross-checking of such things.
“<massive Greek-inflected formula> where tau is the space time, capital V dot sub t is the volumetric flow rate at time t…”
Or that could be me with a deficit of working memory and a lifelong dependence on sight and continual cross-checking of such things.
@wenwizzle basically, it would probably help to have the individual symbols explained before the equation (but even that doesn’t accurately reflect how people speak about math).
People actually say: “Volume at time t is equal to the volumetric flow rate multiplied by time plus the initial volume,” which is clearer than the textbook description “V sub T equals V dot T, where V sub T is the volume at time t, V dot is the volumetric flow rate, and t is time.”
People actually say: “Volume at time t is equal to the volumetric flow rate multiplied by time plus the initial volume,” which is clearer than the textbook description “V sub T equals V dot T, where V sub T is the volume at time t, V dot is the volumetric flow rate, and t is time.”
@wenwizzle and all of this is an abled dude just realizing aloud how hard disabled people have it, so I should shut it.
@wenwizzle
I will forward in late august your contact request to a french screen reader user who has had successfully completed the math program for two years of university degree. The problem was more about lack of materials to learn programming languages for screen reader users.
I will forward in late august your contact request to a french screen reader user who has had successfully completed the math program for two years of university degree. The problem was more about lack of materials to learn programming languages for screen reader users.
Kevin Fjelsted@wenwizzle I completed my undergrad in COmputer Science with math up through four years of Calculus and three years of Phusics, plus my MBA with accounting and finance Spreadsheets and statistics. Screenreaders all the way! :) #accessibility #Math #Latex #Matlab
NV Access@wenwizzle Hi Wenwei, earlier this year we attended a session at the CSUN conference called “What grade did your screen-reader get in Arithmetic?”. The presenters were Mary Stores and Brian Richwine from Indiana University Bloomington. While the CSUN notes are not available, their presentation from the Accessing Higher Ground conference is: https://accessinghigherground.org/what-grade-did-your-screen-reader-get-in-arithmetic/ The presenters were very knowledgeable and seemed quite approachable when we spoke with them, so may be able to offer advice.
Justin Buist@wenwizzle Not directly, no. I'm sighted myself but have worked on software issues like this in the past and enjoy them.
And, while I'm an undergrad math student, I'm also 43 and friends with a professor at GVSU who also makes this a priority when writing open format textbooks.
A blind student at my university wanted to take algebra. It was the first time trying to accommodate that. The publisher of their existing book wanted $40,000 USD to make a Braille version. The university switched to a free open access book that got a Braille version produced in 3 days for free. Or far closer to free than $40k.
No topic should be off limits for blind students and I intend to take time over the next couple of years to help make sure that becomes reality, at least in maths.
A link to the open textbook math section can be found here: https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/subjects/mathematics
Don't be afraid to reach out if you find something there that you want but isn't accessible. I'll help figure something out.
Tim Makarios@wenwizzle
I've done a lot of maths in my life, but only a little of it with screen readers.
When I was looking at options for screen readers, I was attracted by #Emacspeak, because it's described as a complete audio desktop, rather than an audio interface to an essentially visual desktop.
One #Emacs feature that might be useful is that its clipboard (called its "kill ring") contains everything you've cut ("killed"), not just the most recent thing. So when you paste ("yank"), you'll by default get the most recent thing in the kill ring, but you can cycle through the older things there, too.
Another potentially useful feature is that you can have two windows open at the same time. If you're not a fan of "Alt-Tab" you might not like "Control-x o", either. But if you want them to, the two windows can be showing different parts of the same document, so you can easily switch back and forth between two parts of the same document.
I can't unequivocally recommend Emacs, though. As I understand it, any Emacs package that wants to can hook into every keystroke, which seems like a security nightmare to me. And while the kill ring can be very useful, if you accidentally end up with a passphrase in there, it'll stay there (probably accessible to every Emacs package that wants to read it), till you either quit Emacs or figure out how to remove things from the kill ring. These concerns made me uncomfortable about typing passphrases in Emacs, and limited the extent to which I was willing to use Emacspeak as a complete audio desktop, as it was intended to be.
(Another minor niggle is that the behaviour of some commands is still affected by how much can fit on the screen, which doesn't seem right for something designed as an audio desktop.)
Steph@wenwizzle Zach Lattin may be a good person to reach out to? He is a blind screenreader user who did an undergrad degree in math and now works as an assistive technology trainer and web accessibility specialist. He gave a brilliant keynote presentation at the 2022 ATHEN virtual STEM accessibility conference.
You can find the description of his talk and links to his contact info here: https://athenpro.org/content/keynote-2022-stem-accessibility-conference
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