Good evening! I am doing a project related to accessible mathematics and I would need your opinions and experiences as we are all living in different places and probably all have had different experiences. In the end there are many resources but they are little known and I'm sure there are things I've never heard of.
My final idea is to be able to collect as many resources as I can so that as many people as possible can access them.
I would like to know what you have used over the years: did you start using perkins? an abacus? Directly a computer? What programs do you use now on your computer? Any particular screen reader? Any math editor for writing? Programming languages? Do you know any OCR (i.e., any program that transforms pdfs or handwritten text to other formats)? Do you know any web to do calculations that is accessible, or at least usable? How do you graph: do you draw or use applications on the computer? I listen to anything that has to do with science. I would appreciate experiences, however simple they may be or even if you think everyone knows them, maybe not, and everything will be useful to me or others.
The project will take several months, because what they ask me at the university is a specific format and first I want to focus on that, which basically would be to make comparisons with latex to html with some converters and see which is more accessible and why. But when I deliver it I will continue with the collection of resources as I said, with the idea of making something public so that people can find it. I also intend to keep updating it, because I am very interested in the field.

Hope to read your experiences and opinions
Thanks :)

hello,
I am trying to answer your questions, please don't mind gramatical mistakes.

did you start using perkins? an abacus? Directly a computer? What programs do you use now on your computer? Any particular screen reader?

I have done my math in school level fully on brail, and math slet.
I don't know its official name, but its a slet where operations done by leads.
in college level, I have used only computer for the math, with NVDA as a screen reader.
regarding programs:
I have used notepad, microsoft word for equations, and other word problems stuff like permutations combinations, which requires multiple steps.
for calculation, I have used windows calculator.

Any math editor for writing? Programming languages?

I don't use any math editor, but with regards to programming languages,
I have used python.
specially pandas, because it is the best for tabular data, mainly in statistics.

Do you know any OCR (i.e., any program that transforms pdfs or handwritten text to other formats)?

if you want to achieve by programming language, then teseract O C R is best.
in python, its rapper is there, named as pytesaract.
if you are looking by direct application, then In my country, which is in India,
We have few applications to do this:
1: Insta reader.
2: Kibo.
3: Envision.
4: Tech freedom.
I am not sure regarding there availibility at global stage.
but I think they are available, because these applications supports non indian languages as well.
If your data is tabular, and don't require OCR,
I will suggest you use adobe reader.
it is best reader, which present tabular data in exact form.

Do you know any web to do calculations that is accessible, or at least usable?

On web i am not aware,
but in case of windows, windows calculator is the best which i have seen so far.

How do you graph: do you draw or use applications on the computer?

I have understood graph entire on excel.
For example, I have understood x axis, which is horizontal axis, from A 14 to h 14, like this.
I have understood graphs like An indifference curve, demand supply curve, etc easily on excel.

I hope it can help you,
Good luck in your Project!
Fill free to contact if you need anything from me.

Thank you.
Your experience and mine are totally different haha.
I totally agree with you with the windows calculator, it helps me so much, but using the scientiffic version, not the standard one.
I used Braille until high school that I started using the computer. At first with Jaws and lambda, which it is a math editor that lets you export to xhtml and the teachers could see what I was writting and then when I entered university I changed to NVDA and learnt latex. The screenreader in my case has nothing to do in what I was using, you can use lambda with a nvdaAddon but I needed latex because math was getting more complex.
About OCRs I know that there exist a lot of them which can transform pdf or handwritten content to other formats, but usually the problem is with the formulas or scientiffic content, the ones I used are infty reader and mathpix. In both you have to pay, the first one a quantity per year, and the second one let's you choose if monthly or yearly. Now I am using more mathpix and I find it really helpful, it's true that handwritten content has not a very good conversion, but sometimes it works.
And I normally draw graphics or describe them. Or ask other people to draw them for me to understand how the graphic is. It's not the best, and my brain has not a good spatial vision? (I don't know if you say it like this) and I think it's a problem because it is very useful

I used brail, abacus, talerfraim (math slate) in my school and used computer with nvda screan reader to do math in Microsoft word. I have also used math type and latex software to do math. math type is text editer.

I used braille, adaptive drawign tools for geometry, 3D models of figures and other stuff, but in the later years, when I only had to do equations and other calculus, I started using only the Office suite, mainly Word where things were not that complicated.

• did you start using perkins? Yes.
• What programs do you use now on your computer? NVDA for screen reader. Chrome or book warm for PDFs, Edge for browsing, VS code, Notepad plus plus, office and normal notepad depending on the use case. Of course many other programs too but I am assuming these would be the answers for your particular research case.
• Any math editor for writing? I prefer writing math in braille, however, in normal case I write it in normal text editor, usually I would prefer writing it in BRF if I have access to an audio recording or a private tutor.
• Programming languages? a few, but for math probably LaTeX or markdown / HTML.
• Do you know any OCR (i.e., any program that transforms pdfs or handwritten text to other formats)? Envision, for math math pics or mathkicker but I didn't have a best experience with MathKicker yet. Also MS Office Word itself to convert PDF.
• Do you know any web to do calculations that is accessible, or at least usable? Windows calculator also there was one I can't recall its name something like decimal or so.
• How do you graph: do you draw or use applications on the computer? I don't anymore, but when I was in school, I used to get tactiled graphs using these embossers. Probably Tiger was one of them.
Good luck!

Thanks. My questions were general questions haha. I mean if you think that there's something relevant that you want to say and I didn't ask it of course it's more than welcome.
For example. If you use NVDA you use any addon? Or same for jaws, you have to put on any configuration?
But Fawaz, when you write in text editors you write with the latex symbols? Or how do you do math understandable?

In regards to accessible math resources, there is:
the orion TI84+ graphing calculator. Definitely showing its age now as it was released in 2013 and the sighted only version of the TI 84 + was released in probably 2005 but it can do all the stuff you need for calculus in a pinch.
I used Braille textbooks for math all through k-12 in school and in college up to calculus 3 and linear algebra.
I never used an abacus for math as I am a bit young for that now and we had plenty of access to computers.
For graph viewing, there is a cool program called MathTrax which is created by NASA. It is very simple; you enter one or two equations, and then it will play an audio representation of the graph or graphs of the equations. It even supports non-functions, such as circles, which is pretty neat.
As I was leaving college, I was using Wolfram Alpha which is a really nice math resource web site which seems to be fairly accessible.
Just after leaving college I learned of a really neat online caulculator called Desmos. Its accessible mode gives you all the powers of the Orion TI84+ calculator in a web browser, including audible graphs. And if you use NVDA with it or with wolfram alpha, the math support means you can read everything in your Braille math code of choice if you have a braille display attached.

Hello,

When I was at school, I used simple text files or word documents as soon as I have got a computer, when I was around 11 years old.
For math equations, we had a very simple text-based notation which looks a little like programming language.
For example: (x+1)^2 = x^2 + 2x + 1

Then at university, this kind of notation wasn't enough. Most professors gave me their courses in LaTeX source.
I don't know if it evolved now, but at that time, PDF produced by LaTeX were totally unusable. At best there were one word per line, but most of the time, letters were randomly mixed up, and math equation just appeared as a serie of unpronounced symbols.
ON my side, during exams, I wasn't required to write syntactically correct LaTeX. I still used my simple text notation with a few improvements, and it was perfectly accepted.

Since I finished my studies in 2015, I haven't followed much how it evolved, if it's getting better or worse.
However, what I can say is that the math viewer of Jaws is still extremely slow, doesn't work all the time and even sometimes makes webpages with a lot of math to crash. I would prefer having an option to disabled it and have access to the original LaTeX code instead.

I was born partially sighted and lose sight when I was 14 years old, so I learned braille very late.
I know enough braille to read playing cards, labels, medicine notices of a few lines and other quick notes, but not enough to read entire books. I'm very slow. I have never learned math nor music braille.

Concerning other material, I mostly used plastic sheets of paper where one could draw in relief, as well as accessible rules, compass, etc.
The last years of my studies, I also used a termaforming machine. You had to print somthing in a special sheet of paper, pass it into the machine, and then it went out in relief.
Lego or other construction games, or magnetic stuff where also very useful on certain occasions.

For calculations, I was simply using the windows calculator. Nowadays, I no longer use windows calculator but run node or python REPL instead. It's easier, as the windows calculator is becoming less and less accessible as the updates pass.

For keyWasFull:
Could you give me the official link for mathTrax download or info, please?
But if you use NVDA you use an addon, right? Or how do you read math content.
Also I don't think that has anything with how young you are but with the resources your country has as a country and for blind people. Some latin american countries still teach children and teenagers with an abacus.

For aminiel:
yeah, it's still like this. pdf with math content at least for me it's unreadable. I also use latex and that's why I am trying to find converters to html or other formats for people who don't want to learn latex because they only want to read content, not to work with it.
Do you need to activate any option for reading math code in Jaws? Or to change any configuration. I've read in the new things that came up with the march update that Jaws is going to have mathcat, which is the old mathplayer but updated so that may work better in the future.
The termaforming machine was yours? I think that ONCE, the organization in Spain that helps blind people uses that, but I never tried to find one, for graphs or drawings it's very useful so it may be a good idea to get more info :)

I use MathCAT addon for NVDA. I prefer character mode for navigation. but also I have braille display connected too.

I personally use Edico for everything related to math and chem and ph.

Pasting from their web site:
"EDICO is a scientific editor for Windows, developed by UCM (Universidad Complutense de Madrid) and ONCE (National Organization of the Blind of Spain) which allows students with visual disabilities to interact with teachers and classmates, following the mathematics, physics or chemistry lessons in real time and in a completely usable way."
To download it, just google CTI ONCE edico and you will see a page in Spanish.
Sometimes the browser detects it as a virus so you may have some problems during the download.
Edico is originally only compatible with jaws, but there is a addon developed by an Italian association if I'm not mistaken that makes it accessible with nvda as well:
https://github.com/edicoIta/edico-nvda
During the installation you must request an activation code from the ONCE CTI. You do not need to be Spanish or registered with ONCE for them to give you the code.
It is quite complete in my opinion, it includes a scientific calculator of course, although it has some things that can be improved but I think it is much more comfortable than making systems of equations in Word, which was what I used to do before.

I used braille but will tell you more as my experience is different to what you have so far as it goes back to the '80s and '90s.

I did use Sharp Calculators and interestingly enough I think the same kind or the later kind are advertised on RS. These calculators were American and cost about £80 at the time which was a lot of money then. The early version did have a square root button where the "newer version had an alarm, really useful for maths. In the '90s there was a cheaper large print talking basic calculator. However, my college did create a talking Scientific calculator that was mounted on top of an orange plastic box and was quite bulky but did do the job. At the time this was the only Scientific calculator available.

For graphs we used a cork board. You pinned a thermoform sheet of squares on top of it using drawing pins. You then had some elastic bands and some pins with plastic heads. You then created your own graph. Sometimes the pins did shoot out... I think later we used Manila paper instead of thermoform but not sure how they were created.

In the middle of the '90s I did create bar charts although not for maths using Lotus 1,2,3 which was a spreadsheet program.

what is a cork board? I can use to ask someone to graphs for software testing

It was a square board that was not much bigger than a standard square of braille paper. Not sure if they do it now. Cork is still used to seal wine and some other drinks. The point is you can put a pin into it many times and still be able to use it.

I used a thing called taylor frame earlier(a wooden board with holes in it where you put square or rectangular pegs to form numbers and letters), but it got too tedious working with that thing for large equations, so I shifted to mental mathematics. I prefer solving stuff in my head rather than relying on other things. On computer ASCII mathematics for the win, although it's still not as efficient as doing things in your head. For remembering purposes, however, nothing else even comes close in my experience. Same thing for graphs. It was considerably harder to handle graphs when compared to equations that way.
@2, a very interesting idea to visualize graphs in Excel.

mostly now a days I use be my ai for graphs. I send the photo through mail to myself to my phone and share to be my ai and it will properly describe the graphs and I can ask questions if I don't understand.

Hello,
long answer ahead.
I rely on mental mathematics.
Braille stem books were not even available in my state for 11th and 12th. I studied from pdf contents from other educational councils of India. As you know, diagrams and mathematical content is practically unreadable.
I took help from sighted relatives and friends. To understand the curve of a graph, I would shape a broken earphone wire to replicate the curve-trend. On a few occasions, I and my best friend in highschool went to some construction site area and drew diagrams on wet sand. It works really well!
I use excel for matrix and other tabular data. After completing my education and moving into my job, I feel like I have almost entirely lost my mental-calculation abilities.
I tried LaTeX and compiled it with the tx compiler to write notes, but realised that it takes a lot of my energy as I have to frequently look stuff up. I prefer ASCII math instead.
If I am already writing on notepad and have to write a table, I use the typical method in programming. Not strictly the following, but I am making it compatible with sagemath for this example.

I=matrix([
[1,0,0],
[0,1,0],
[0,0,1]
])

If I have the equation of a curve I want to understand, I use desmos sonifier.

Good luck

what is desmos sonifier and how to use it? do you have the link?

Maybe it's this? Here you can write equations or expressions and try to understand how the graph is with sounds.
https://www.desmos.com/calculator?lang=es

https://www.desmos.com/calculator?lang=en for English

Yes that one. Haven't tried if there is a way to visualise data there, but for equation it certainly works. Try entering x^2+y^2=3 for equation of a circle for example.