chez dom

After discussing with Pr G. Weber,  from Technical University of Dresden, about the various Braille Mathematical Notations that have been developed, I decided to try to gather information about these them and to publish it here: Braille Mathematical Notations.

These notations are specific codes to write Mathematical expressions in Braille. As Braille is intrinsically linear, and also because the number of symbols to display is rather large - so each of them needs several Braille characters, these expressions tend to be extremely long and difficult to handle. These specific notations use various strategies in order to reduce this length. The counterpart is that they are quite difficult to learn by users, and also, as they are based on context sensitive grammars, they are quite difficult to transcribe to mainstream Maths notation.

Pr Weber gave me the reference of the UNESCO booklet “World Braille Usage”, which describes the use of Braille in all countries, in all topics (Literary, Sciences, Music…). But this booklet was based on 2 surveys conducted in 79 and 85 and is not complete. Also many countries have upgraded their codes since then. Anyway it’s a precious document to start with?

There was another reference, given to me by Pr Weber too, about a book published in 1942 by the American Printing House for the Blind and entitled “Braille mathematical notations”, by Henry Martin Taylor. It seems there is an exemplary at the US Library of Congress in Washington (http://lccn.loc.gov/63056952). If anybody knows how I could find an electronic copy of this, I would be grateful!

If you have any information which could help me, like more details or any correction of what is already there, or because you know about some other Braille Mathematical codes, please post a comment here. Thanks!

Link: Braille Mathematical Notations

Tags: Maths // Add Comment »

Ms Internet Explorer does not come with MathML support but 2 plugins enable it:

• The excellent MathPlayer plugin, developed by Design Sciences, proposes a nice rendering AND cool accessibility features: zoom, enlightenment, transcription for speech synthesis. MathPlayer can be used together with IE versions ≥ 5.5.
• Techexplorer plugin displays MathML on all IE versions ≥ 5.0, including the old MacOS version of IE (which is not maintained any more by MS).

On one hand it’s a pity that Ms, even in the recent IE7, still does not handle MathML. But on the other hand, it allows the development of excellent projects. For instance MathPlayer does not only display MathML contents in IE, but it also supports accessibility. It allows to zoom on the formula, and generates an alternative sentence to be said by a speech synthesis if a screen reader requests it. Additionally we are working with Design Science in order to provide online conversion to Mathematical Braille. This is not available yet, but comes asap.

Tags: Maths, howto // Add Comment »

Here is a set of slides that I made for a presentation at the JEM Thematic Network workshop in Barcelona, Jan 31-Feb 2. The goal of the presentation was to advocate for accessibility. The first part presents the modalities used by blind people to access Mathematical expressions, then there is a description of several projects from the state of the art, showing that all support MathML. Finally the conclusion is “Please use MathML!”.

jem012008-archambault.pdf

Tags: Non classé // Add Comment »

Here is a representation of the French Braille alphabet. It’s a light
gif image that can be easily displayed on a computer screen or even on a
smart phone.

[Read more →]

Tags: Braille fonts // Add Comment »

A very nasty virus appeared recently. Well this is not unusual. Hundreds of viruses are created each year. But this one has a particularity: it targets specifically blind users, by breaking their screen readers, isn’t it nice? This virus comes has a fake crack of Jaws 9. When launched, it will install a trojan targeting Jaws and all the other screen readers, so nothing will work!

Blind users are vulnerable to any other virus, as anyone. But this one is worse than anything since it attacks directly the only way they have to do anything on the computer! When the screen reader is broken, there is nothing they can do with the computer, and especially nothing they can do to fix it, except ask for help. In addition it seems that this one is particularly difficult to get rid of.

The fact that it comes as a fake crack for jaws asks question. Is it a way of punishing the bad guys who want to crack a protected software? Then the punishment seems way unbalanced. Or is it simply that it looks the most efficient way to spread it out?

We often wonder what’s happening in the mind of guys designing viruses. Some of them show vanity (”I am so good that I’ll write a virus difficult to get rid off”), some show jalousy (”As can’t do anything good in my life, I’ll destroy your data”), some show stupidity, etc. But I miss words to qualify the mind of the author of this one… I guess he (I can’t imagine it’s a she…) is puncturing wheelchairs tyres in his spare time.

Reference: Blind computer users struck by a very unusual Trojan attack

Tags: General // 1 Comment »