latex:accessible math

[Liz Hare]

Hello,

I would definitely suggest using LaTex for expressing math work. There 
is nothing else except maybe MathML that lets you specify exactly what 
things like equations and tables look like.

As mentioned before, the mathematical expressions in the .dvi or .pdf 
output are not accessible. However, when I produce reports in LaTex, I 
do check the PDFs because the text and tables do come through. So you 
can make sure nothing drastic happened to those elements of your work. 
You can OCR it into Word if you really want to check they layout 
carefully but I rarely have the patience to do this.

It would be ideal if your professors were familiar with LaTex and you 
could submit the .tex files themselves. That way, they could give 
feedback in raw LaTex format too, and you could understand it without 
needing a reader. I had one stats professor who did that with me.

It depends somewhat on your career goals. If you are going to keep doing 
math and science, the LaTex learning curve is worth it. There are tons 
of resources on the Web and if you find you've forgotten some minor 
detail, it's quite easy to use Google to get a quick answer. There are 
even more ways nowadays to convert between LaTex and other formats.

Liz

Liz Hare PhD
Dog Genetics LLC
doggene at earthlink.net
http://www.doggenetics.com

On 1/22/2013 9:06 PM, Scott D. Henning wrote:
> Hello Ty,
>
> I will tell you what I know of the  subject and hope that it helps you.
>
> I always found LaTex mentioned when blind people needed to deal with
> math and started looking into it some time ago. Here is what I found.
>
> It was developed to typeset  Mathematics for publication. These would be
> science and math articles. The typeset output is NOT accessible. I was
> not sure if you knew that from your post. The LaTex is accessible
> because it uses human readable syntax to produce the output. The output
> could be turned in to the teacher, you work in the LaTex. I would think
> that a sighted helper to make sure output is correct would be useful. I
> even wonder if the teacher could simply read the LaTex directly.
>
> As for your use of "Rubber" I think you said, I don't know that one.
> Tell me more...I can do some research on the subject.
>
> I will be happy to help you, contact me off list
> shenning at durango.net
>
> Scott
>