FW: Blind Student in Math Class

[Orrange, Mary Beth]

I received the email below from the Director of DSS at my campus as she is aware we are working on building a repository for help for students with disabilities in math classes as one of our priorities this year. It might be a good place to begin when we find ourselves with a sight-impaired student in our class.

Mary Beth

________________________________________
FYI

Yes, it is possible to read math equations with a screen reader, assuming the content is worked up in Mathematical Markup Language within a web document. See this article (and others linked from it) on the University of Washington website: http://www.washington.edu/doit/Faculty/articles?404

________________________________

CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE:
This e-mail and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity they are addressed to. This email and its contents may be subject to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act ("FERPA"). It is intended only for the use of the individual(s) named above and privileges attached to the email, if any, are not waived by virtue of this having been sent by electronic transmission. If the person actually receiving this e-mail or any other reader of this e-mail is not the named recipient or the employee or agent responsible to deliver it to the named recipient, any use, dissemination, distribution, forwarding or copying of any part of the message or its attachments is strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender immediately by return e-mail and delete it from your system. Unauthorized use of this material is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful.

[Bruce Yoshiwara]

Although MathML is the standard accepted by the WorldWide Web Consortium (W3C) for putting math notation on the web, there appears to be no momentum for its widespread use.  It has already been the W3C standard for about two decades, but Microsoft has shown no interest in making InternetExplorer capable of reading MathML--the independent company DesignScience (MathType) provides the MathPlayer plug-in.  

For years mathematicians have used some form of TeX for submitting papers, and the requirement to move to another makeup language has been resisted. 

The MAA has started moving towards using MathJAX (created by Davide Cervone, who had previously created jsMath) for posting math expressions--MathJAX puts the burden of rendering on the server, so that MathJAX works with any browser, and the author can input the math expressions using either what is essentially MathML or TeX.

I haven't heard about what readers do with MathJAX.

[Foth, Robert]

I have been using MathJAX for the last year in one of my courses (for the notes and isntructions) and have to say it is pretty easy to use if you already use some other form of web authoring. I have not had any complaints from students about not being able to see any of the math on a page. Lets just say it saves a ton of time on my side as it is fairly simple to add the bit of code to your page and work from there. You most likely need to author those pages outside of you LMS though (I use Dreamweaver for this).

 

Robert Foth

 

 

Robert Foth

Instructional Faculty - Mathematics

Pima Community College, Community Campus

Office: C-205

Phone: (520) 206-3978

Email: rf...@pima.edu

 

 

---

From: amaty...@googlegroups.com [amaty...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Bruce Yoshiwara [byosh...@hotmail.com]
Sent: Sunday, May 27, 2012 8:35 AM
To: amaty...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [amatyc-itlc] Re: FW: Blind Student in Math Class

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "AMATYC-ITLC" group.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/amatyc-itlc/-/QdNvIrexIqoJ.
To post to this group, send email to amaty...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to amatyc-itlc...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/amatyc-itlc?hl=en.

[Maria Andersen]

Documents typed with Word and MathType can be read using a program called MathDaisy.

:) maria