[Athen] Students with Learning Disabilities and Textbooks withMath

[Sean J Keegan]

I had an older version of the Read Hear player for Mac that did not do 
MathML, but the latest version seems to be very robust.  You can play a 
DAISY book with either the book's TTS or the OS X voice and both seem to 
work well.

If you are using the book's TTS audio, it does say "mathematical 
expression" at the beginning and end of each equation.  At least I think 
it is saying "mathematical expression".  For some reason, the book's 
audio TTS sounds like it's had a long night drinking at the bar and the 
audio is not so intelligible.  The math is good, it's just the very 
beginning and end of the equation.

The OS X TTS voice Alex is very responsive and seems to handle a variety 
of math equations.  So far, I have tried basic and intermediate 
algebraic equations and it seems to handle the markup just fine. 
Overall, nice support.  Will try with some of the other free OS X voices.

I have found that the application does not do well with a math-based 
DTBook.xml file.  If using a DAISY book, then all is good, but using 
DTBook.xml files seems to break the math.  I used DTBook.xml files as 
generated from the Save-as-Daisy plug-in for MS Word.

If you are creating DAISY books with MathML content and the student is 
using a Mac, then Read Hear is the way to go at this point.  ePub 
support is listed as "soon" and there is no indication as to what 
version of ePub or if that implementation will support math content.

Take care,
Sean
-- 
Sean Keegan
Associate Director, Assistive Technology
Office of Accessible Education - Stanford University
http://studentaffairs.stanford.edu/oae

On 2/7/13 7:47 PM, Ken Petri wrote:

> Definitely agree with Ron on this one. There needs to be a

> non-MathPlayer dependent/cross platform MathML player available.

> PTReader uses Charles Chen's Firefox libraries, which I don't think are

> still being maintained. However, it would be a shame to see the work go

> to waste. We need the same thing for EPUB3.

>

> gh's ReadHear uses MathPlayer on Windows but also claims to support

> MathML on Mac:

>

> http://www.ghbraille.com/software/readhear-mac-instant-download

>

> We've liked ReadHear for Windows. Haven't tried it on the Mac, so don't

> know it's sophistication with MathML.

>

>

>

>

> ken

> --

> Ken Petri

> Program Director, OSU Web Accessibility Center

> 102D Pomerene Hall, 1760 Neil Avenue, Columbus, Ohio  43210

> Office: 614.292.1760 | Mobile: 614.218.1499 | Fax: 614.292.4190

> http://wac.osu.edu | petri.1 at osu.edu <mailto:petri.1 at osu.edu>

>

>

> On Thu, Feb 7, 2013 at 6:30 PM, <ron at ahead.org <mailto:ron at ahead.org>>

> wrote:

>

>

>     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

>