Math Accessibility, a Brief Review

By John Gardner

Electronic text has been accessible in principle for decades.  I used several brands of screen reader with DOS computers, switched to Linux for a few years, and finally began using Windows in the mid-1990’s.  But I was never able to read a mainstream math equation until 2004 when the MathPlayer plug-in to Internet Explorer was enhanced to permit audio access to the equation.  Until that time, the only way that a blind person could read mainstream math was to read the source file of a document composed in one of the page-setting family of TeX languages.  Generations of blind people either had to learn TeX and somehow obtain a copy of the original source from the author,  depend on sighted helpers to “make math accessible”, or just not do math.  TeX is accessible, but it is hard to argue that it is really very usable when, for example, the equation for the solution to the quadratic equation (fraction with numerator –b plus/minus square root(b squared – 4ac) and denominator 2a) is written using LaTeX (the most popular flavor of TeX): 
$x=\frac{-b\pm\sqrt{b^2-4ac}}{2a}$. Imagine trying to solve equations for algebra homework using this notation!

                                                   

With the MathPlayer enhancement, it became possible for me and other blind people to read math in mainstream web documents provided they were expressed in the new math language MathML.  Unfortunately MathML was not displayed visually by many web browsers, (including Internet Explorer unless MathPlayer was installed).  In those early days of MathML, pages coded in that language just crashed when displayed on most web browsers.  Not surprisingly, few authors used MathML.  Instead, they continued to display math equations as images – which were of course inaccessible to me.

Today, MathML is becoming fairly popular, because equations can be displayed on any web browser with a new web technology, MathJAX, developed by a consortium of scientific organizations.  Most authors now want to use MathML, because MathML equations are much prettier and more readable than equation images.  This is good for blind people, because more and more scientific literature is becoming directly readable.  Life is still far from perfect however, because MathPlayer makes a math equation accessible as a string to be spoken.  For example, the equation 1+1=2 is displayed by MathPlayer as “one plus one equals two”.  The equation can be captured and copied or displayed on a braille display as exactly that string of text, not as “1+1=2”.  This is access, but it sure isn't excellent access.  A Braille reader, or somebody who wants to have a written record would be far better served by the compact math notation and not the spoken string. 

This not-excellent access is due to limitations of present day screen readers and not from the MathML.  So further development should eventually provide excellent access to MathML.  Since the introduction of MathPlayer accessibility, I have often said that “accessibility of math for reading is a solved problem in principle, but writing math is not”.  In one important sense, that second statement is dead wrong.  People who are fluent in math Braille can not only read math readily but can also write math and develop algebraic solutions with moderate facility.  MathML is translatable to math Braille, and there are several applications that do that, although all have sufficiently serious bugs/errors that responsible math transcribers still proof most documents and fix errors before releasing it to the blind user.  Computer translating math Braille to standard notation is not really feasible, partly because there are ambiguities that computers cannot easily sort out, but mostly because back translation of all braille math codes are extraordinarily sensitive to author errors.  In practice, a transcriber is necessary for Braille math to be converted to standard notation.  This is not likely to change unless one uses math Braille codes that are not “context dependent’.  So at present, Braille math is not really a feasible way to access mainstream math, especially for writing.

At the present time, TeX is still the most widely used method for writing mainstream math by blind people.  Triangle, a linear notation developed in my Oregon State University group, the European Lambda editor, and the ChattyInfty.

Applications are used by a few people, but none of these fully meets needs.  So about a year and half ago I got tired of this situation and decided to develop a blind-friendly interface to standard math applications. My goal was to allow really usable access for both reading and writing.  I call it the LEAN method, and I will describe it in detail in a later blog post.  For the moment, let me say that it is a descendant of Triangle and Lambda, using a compact linear notation and a lot of very useful shortcuts for doing lots of math manipulation, particularly with fractions.  The first implementation is to MSWord with the MathType editor, the authoring software used by 75% of people in the world who publish scientific documents.  For the first time, blind people will be able to read and author scientific Word documents almost as easily as sighted authors can.  LEAN Math has just gone into beta testing, and I expect it to be available commercially within a few months.  It will be free to individuals and available at modest cost to institutions.

My exposure to early universal design

By: Carolyn Gardner

As John was exploring new technologies making it possible for blind people to "read" information, I was teaching adult basic education at Linn-Benton Community College.  Many of my students had previously been struggling students in high school and were now preparing to take the GED test to earn a high school equivalency.  The GED covers five subject tests (literature, social studies, science, math and language arts).    My students had to spend the most time studying to pass the math and the language arts tests. 

Luckily, my classroom was blessed with several computers.  I discovered fairly soon that students of all ages liked computers and found it easier to learn using computers rather than using printed books.  When I saw the technologies making books accessible to blind people, I realized how powerful a multi-modal approach to information could be.  I was fortunate to get a small grant to purchase some software such as the Kurzweil reading system, TextHelp to help with writing, and Inspiration with organization for writing.  I found many wonderful tools and activities on the web, but much was not so useful.  Much K-12 software was difficult for adults to use.  Most had complex interfaces that were more distracting than helpful.  Sometimes the game which was the reward for completing the assignment was harder for my adult learners than the actual activity. 

I could go on and on about useful software and, of course, today there is much more software available than there was 14 years ago.  The biggest problem then and still today is that software is designed to be accessed by people with good vision and hearing, often requiring good hand-eye coordination as well. This unfortunately leaves out many people. I would like to see all software designers use their software blindfolded, then with ear plugs.  Oh yes, for good measure perhaps they should try it using an alternative keyboard.  This might help to develop software that could be used by everybody.

Confronting the challenges of being a blind physicist in 1988

By: John Gardner

It was early September, 1988 when I woke up one morning blind.  The next month or more were spent commuting to Portland for eye operations. I was experiencing severe pain and nausea caused by fluctuating pressure in my eye, but my professional responsibilities didn't slow down a lot. Even from my hospital bed, I spent hours a day on the phone directing my Oregon State University physics research group. In retrospect the illness and pressing responsibilities were a blessing in disguise, because they were distractions from the usual human depression over going blind. By the time my work schedule returned to normal in January, 1989 the worst of it was past.

My computer at the time was an IBM PC running DOS.  I learned about screen readers and eventually settled on Vocal-Eyes, the forerunner of Window-Eyes.  The internet and e-mail were in a primitive state.  I did not begin using e-mail extensively until my sabbatical year in Germany in 1993-94.  There were many challenges, but at least computers allowed me to read and write text and math (in the Latex language). I was thankful that my vision loss had not occurred before the advent of personal computers.  My two biggest challenges were time and graphics. 

Time was a huge problem because everything now took so much more of it.  Text could be read and written pretty efficiently on the computer, but math was a horror.  It takes forever and intense concentration to read any but the simplest math equation in Latex, and “doing” math (ie solving complicated algebraic and integro/differential equations) was all but impossible.  I did learn Braille but never conquered it sufficiently that it was faster than reading in audio with my screen reader.  Perhaps Braille math would have been more efficient than listening to Latex, but it was just not practical.  There were no computer math to/from Braille translators, and it would have taken an army of human translators to meet my needs for math to/from Braille conversion.

Graphics was the real killer problem though.  At this time I needed to read perhaps a dozen articles  and skim contents of several dozen journals a week.  Math was difficult, but there was just not any way to access the vast amount of scientific information conveyed by graphics.  A good fraction of the earth’s population would have been needed to convert graphics to tactile form to meet all my needs.  And even then, a substantial fraction of those graphics were simply too complex to be understandable without a note book full of Braille notes.  Even worse, the data being gathered in my own physics research lab was analyzed graphically, and it was just not possible to reproduce these data in a form accurate enough for me to analyze them or to know whether my students had done it correctly.  This problem had no solution and eventually led to my giving up materials physics research, but it stimulated me to start a new Oregon State University accessibility research program funded by the National Science Foundation.

This new research effort was remarkably fruitful.  It produced the DotsPlus Braille method of writing math, the Tiger technology for embossing Braille and graphics, the predecessor of the Audio Graphing Calculator, and software forerunners to the IVEO audio/tactile graphics access technology.  And of course it led directly to the founding of ViewPlus.  These developments will be described in later posts.

The New-Look ViewPlus Blog

By: Carolyn and John Gardner

We, the founders of ViewPlus, have accepted the challenge of writing the blog.  We will continue to post ViewPlus news and events, but the blog will also become a forum on topics relevant to ViewPlus’ mission.  We expect to be writing about accessibility and disability-related aspects of education, employment, math and science, health, government and probably a lot of other topics.

We will start this new venture with a few posts on our own history – how we became involved in accessibility research and development, why ViewPlus was founded, and the continuing challenges we will discuss in this space.  First, an introduction.  We are the founders and the two legally-required officers of ViewPlus.  John is President and Carolyn is Secretary of the corporation.  We were both academics when we founded ViewPlus in 1996, so don’t be surprised when we sound more like academics than business people.  We are who we are.

Carolyn: In my early career I was a first grade school teacher.  While mostly staying at home to raise our two sons, I also earned my masters degree in Reading Education and substitute taught for K-6 and resource rooms.  Next I went to Linn Benton Community College where I taught and directed Adult Basic Education (ABE) which included the study for the GED test and English as a Second Language.  I learned a lot about learning disabilities from teaching ABE, where many of my students almost certainly had undiagnosed learning disabilities or just learned in non-traditional ways.   At ViewPlus, I have been the “person in charge of making sure the bills are paid and generally getting things done”, ending up as CFO.  I transitioned out of the CFO position recently in order to have more time to develop educational products and materials, and co-author this blog.

John: I am a physicist who spent 30 years on the faculty of Oregon State University before retiring in 2003 to devote full time to ViewPlus.  I was born with one blind eye and various problems with the other eye.  In 1988 I had a minor eye operation whose purpose was to keep me from slowly going blind from glaucoma.  It worked.  I woke up after the operation blind.  I was able to take a couple of quarters off from classroom teaching in order to learn how a blind person can teach physics.  However I could not take time off from being director of my materials physics laboratory.  At the time there were about a dozen undergrad, MS, and PhD students, postdocs, and visiting faculty doing research in my lab, and they couldn't just stop and wait for me to return. So I had to learn quickly how to function minimally as a blind physicist.  Of course I continued to learn new techniques, but it did not take long to find that there were barriers that could not be overcome.  Not in the late 1990’s at any rate.

In the next few blog posts, I will describe the challenges of becoming blind and, in particular, the specific challenges facing any blind scientist at that time.  Carolyn will describe her realization that people with many non-vision disabilities have very similar accessibility needs to those of blind people.  These learning experiences were seminal events leading to the founding of ViewPlus and to its mission “Empowering people worldwide by making information accessible through innovative, inclusive technology solutions”.