Creating Learning Resources for Blind Students

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Mathematics and science Braille textbooks are expensive and require an enormous effort to produce -- until now. A team of researchers has developed a method for easily creating textbooks in Braille, with an initial focus on math textbooks. The new process is made possible by a new authoring system which serves as a "universal translator" for textbook formats, combined with enhancements to the standard method for putting mathematics in a Web page. Basing the new work on established systems will ensure that the production of Braille textbooks will become easy, inexpensive, and widespread.

"This project is about equity and equal access to knowledge," said Martha Siegel, a Professor Emerita from Towson University in Maryland. Siegel met a blind student who needed a statistics textbook for a required course. The book was ordered but took six months (and several thousand dollars) to prepare, causing the student significant delay in her studies. Siegel and Al Maneki, a retired NSA mathematician who serves as senior STEM advisor to the National Federation of the Blind and who is blind himself, decided to do something about it.

"Given the amazing technology available today, we thought it would be easy to piece together existing tools into an automated process," said Alexei Kolesnikov. Kolesnikov, a colleague of Siegel at Towson University, was recruited to the project in the Summer of 2018. Automating the process is the key, because currently Braille books are created by skilled people retyping from the printed version, which involves considerable time and cost. Converting the words is easy: Braille is just another alphabet. The hard part is conveying the structure of the book in a non-visual way, converting the mathematics formulas, and converting the graphs and diagrams.

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