[Athen] Refreshable Braille and Nemeth code

[Sean J Keegan]

 > We have an incoming freshman who is blind and will be
 > using lots of technology.  Given his courseload
 > (Calculus, Chemistry, Physics and a humanities class),
 > he is going to be needing detailed access to mathematical
 > and scientific information.

We just went through this situation last Fall quarter.  Once you know 
what books you will be using, contact me off-list - we did those topics.

 > My understanding is that the screen reader software is the
 > intermediary between the information on the screen and the
 > Braille display.  So, if JAWS can't do math, how does the
 > Nemeth code get to the refreshable Braille display?

The screen-reader is necessary for supporting the interface between the 
refreshable braille display and the computer.  JAWS would not be 
"reading" the Nemeth math content - just passing the content to the 
braille display.  In our situation, the student just loaded everything 
onto their BrailleNote and did not use the computer itself.

 > The only limitation of using a notetaker device for this is the number
 > of braille cells available.

As Patrick mentioned, the issue we encountered was the limited number of 
cells available when displaying matrices on a refreshable display as 
well.  If I recall correctly, the BrailleNote we had access to was 
displaying the rows of the matrix one after another horizontally, which 
initially caused a bit of confusion.  Everything looked fine in Duxbury 
(start brackets were vertically aligned appropriately) but broke down 
when imported into the portable display.  The rows could wrap and the 
second row of the matrix could also end/begin in the same line on the 
display.

Once we identified what was actually happening, the student was 
comfortable with the refreshable display output.  It did take some time 
to understand what was occurring and how the matrices *should* be 
represented vs. how they were being represented and whether it was a 
conversion issue or how the braille display functioned.

 > Do you have any recommendations
 > of places that do Nemeth translation and embossing?

I am actually going to pose a different question: Have you addressed 
tactile graphics and the generation of those files?  The challenge for 
us was not so much the creation of the Nemeth braille, but keeping up 
with the number and level of specificity of tactile graphics we needed 
to produce.

Take care,
Sean
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: skeegan.vcf
Type: text/x-vcard
Size: 332 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mailman12.u.washington.edu/pipermail/athen-list/attachments/20090716/c56a5440/attachment.vcf>