Math accessibility continued

After collecting a lot of information about math translation libraries we found a lot of overlapping effort. There are at least 3 major open source math Braille translation projects, each supporting multiple Braille math codes (there are over a dozen types of Braille math worldwide).

This raises many questions. Which open source library should screen readers like NVDA and Orca use for Braille display support? Should they just use liblouisxml, since they already use liblouis for translating ordinary text into Grade 2 contracted Braille? Liblouisxml currently supports MathML but not TeX, so how would TeX be supported? Since that is used in WikiMedia equation images, it seems important. And, perhaps proprietary screen readers can take advantage of some of these libraries as well.

There is potential collaboration here. If you’re interested in working on these problems or in these projects, please join the new free-math mailing list.

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2 Responses to Math accessibility continued

  1. SusanJ says:

    I’m not sure why you pick WikiMedia as the most important resource.

    What about the National Science Digital Library?
    http://nsdl.org/

    Or Wolfram’s MathWorld?
    http://mathworld.wolfram.com/

    And according to the Abstract of a talk John Gardner is giving at the 2009 CSUN, “ViewPlus and the American Physical Society are collaborating to make all APS publications accessible as DAISY XML. Other scholarly journal publishers will likely follow suit.”

    I’m sure there are many other electronic resources that should be considered before trying to determine what has the highest priority.

    • aaronlev says:

      Hi Susan, where did I say it was the “most important”? I just said it was important.

      Point is, I’d like to support people who’d like to read any math content on the web.

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