Re: [Athen] Students with Learning Disabilities and Textbooks withMath

[ron at ahead.org]

I really wish someone would pick this up.  It was probably the best low cost reader for STEM content that I 
have seen.  

The Mac issue really needs to be resolved, hope iAuthor can work it out.

Ron Stewart


>  -------Original Message-------

>  From: Sean J Keegan <skeegan at stanford.edu>

>  To: Access Technology Higher Education Network <athen-list at u.washington.edu>

>  Subject: Re: [Athen] Students with Learning Disabilities and Textbooks withMath

>  Sent: Feb 07 '13 16:54

>  

>  > On a related note, however, has anyone figured out a method

>  > for making math accessible on a Mac platform?

>  

>  Unfortunately, there does not appear to be many options (still).  The

>  one solution that did work - intermittently, mind you - was the PT

>  Reader plug-in for Firefox.  This would allow you to open a DTBook.xml

>  file in Firefox and would read the MathML content natively.  The website

>  is available at: http://www.cwu.edu/disability-support/pt-reader

>  

>  What was so cool about this plug-in was that you could change the level

>  of verbosity specific to math content to communicate more or less

>  information about the equations. In other words, some students may

>  prefer a very brief description of an equation whereas other students

>  may prefer a more verbose description of the equation.  The plug-in

>  handled all the necessary modifications as to how much was to be spoken

>  to the user.

>  

>  By this point you may be thinking, "Okay, what's the catch?" and sadly,

>  you are not mistaken.  The tool only supports up to Firefox 13 and does

>  not always work seamlessly when it comes to navigation within a

>  document; a minor issue, but very annoying.  Additionally, after

>  upgrading Firefox you would need to uninstall parts of the plug-in and

>  then reinstall new components if they were even supported.

>  

>  So, to give a long answer to a short question - yes, there is a tool

>  that can read MathML content on a Mac, but it is not the most robust

>  solution and your mileage may vary.

>  

>  Take care,

>  Sean

>  

>  --

>  Sean Keegan

>  Associate Director, Assistive Technology

>  Office of Accessible Education - Stanford University

>  http://studentaffairs.stanford.edu/oae

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