[Athen] Accommodating blind students in math

[Deborah Armstrong via athen-list]

I'm always asked questions about this and I hardly have many answers. There are tons of websites on the subject but the target audience is teachers of the visually impaired in K-12.
I know the Microsoft Word equation editor is accessible and I of course know about MathML and the tools for reading it.
And I know a tiny bit of LaTEX and could learn more if needed. I know about the Nemeth Braille charts from NBP - they are wonderful!
But what are folks doing in the following situations:

  *   Student recently lost their sight and so doesn't know Braille. How are you helping them to learn how to show their work when they turn in assignments?
  *   Student wants to do all their work in Nemeth Braille, but how will it get transcribed for the professor grading the assignment?
  *   Student needs to be tutored but the tutor doesn't know Braille or the student doesn't know how to work problems because they did all their math education when sighted and they don't know Braille.
  *   Student needs to take remedial math but cannot see the whiteboard so is lost in class.

I can jabber all day about screen readers and Math-ML, Braille displays and such, but this is not the answer people need. We are a community college and get many students whose last math class was two decades ago when they had vision, or they "suck at math", need tutoring and failed most math in high school. And unlike other subjects, most instructors use highly visual methods to teach it.

I have found Khan academy works wonders for low-vision students who can take their time, magnify the videos and don't feel pressured. But it doesn't work for blind students as without being able to see the video you cannot easily grasp the concepts.

Also there are more and more publisher-supplied math labs without any real idea which ones are accessible and which are not. Is anyone grading these for accessibility? All are behind paywalls.

I wish someone working towards a masters in education would create a fully online, fully accessible remedial math course under a creative commons license. Then we wouldn't have to try to accommodate every individual need for every course with its changing editions of textbooks and each teacher having a different pedagogy.

I've played with the idea of writing a web-based "electric pencil" but maybe one exists already where you could enter equations with a simple interface allowing a blind student and sighted tutor to work easily together. That would be so cool and maybe I'll do it when I retire. Right now I'm often too tired after working and commuting all day to write much code.

--Debee


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