[Athen] Anyone have experience with the JAWS Braille Math editor

[Michael Cantino]

Hi Deborah,
I've been testing out the JAWS Braille Math Editor for the last 6 months or
so, and I've been really pleased with the results.

As you mentioned, the math authoring options for blind users have been
pretty limited. That’s why I’ve been really excited about this JAWS update.
The print to braille and braille to print translation is really solid. It’s
great to finally have an option that will allow braille students to author
math in braille and have that content immediately available to share with
sighted users. There have been similar tools available in the past, but
it’s typically been limited to specific devices. JAWS is so widely used and
readily available that I think this is going to have a much broader impact
than previous tools.

Some things you should know about the JAWS math editor:

   -

   It uses the Nemeth braille code for input and output. Before the US
   adopted UEB as its official braille code in 2016, Nemeth was the only
   technical code in use for math and science (not including the computer
   code). After the adoption of UEB, some states chose to use UEB as their
   technical code, and other states stuck with Nemeth. Depending on the age of
   your students and where they previously attended school, they may or may
   not be familiar with the Nemeth code.
   -

   There are some limitations. I’ve been able to stump JAWS’ Nemeth
   translation, but so far I’ve only had issues with fairly obscure symbols,
   like shapes with specific fill patterns. I would also expect JAWS to
   struggle with spatial content, but I haven’t tested this out. Nemeth uses
   spatial layouts for some content, and the rules for these layouts don’t
   alway follow the typical Nemeth rules. For that reason, I would expect the
   JAWS translation to breakdown if you’re writing something other than
   in-line expressions.
   -

   I’m hearing about compatibility issues. The feature should work in Word
   2019 or in Word 365. Freedom Scientific told me that it might work in “in
   later versions of Word 2016”, but it won’t work in earlier versions of
   Word. The feature will work outside of Word and will copy MathML to the
   clipboard, but I haven’t tested this much yet.
   I’ve also heard that users are having issues with particular braille
   displays. I’ve been using this feature with Focus 40 and Brailliant 40
   displays, and I haven’t had any issues. The tech staff at the Oregon
   Commission for the Blind told me that they were having issues when using
   the feature with the Braille Edge 40 display from HIMS.

One other interesting development is that JAWS can now read math created
with the Word Equation Editor. I don’t think it’s time to ditch MathType
yet, but it can be good to have options. Aside from this JAWS feature, I’ve
noticed that math created with the Word Equation Editor has more errors
than other math tools when translating the content in Duxbury.

Hope that helps! I’d be happy to answer any other questions you have about
this. I don’t have all of the information, but it’s useful for me to study
up on this anyhow.

Michael Cantino (he/him)
BVIS Technology Professional Development Specialist
Northwest Regional Education Service District
(503)614-1339
Check out the BVIS Tech website
<https://sites.google.com/nwresd.k12.or.us/bvistech/home> to find helpful
resources!
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