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Interesting! I never thought about this, thank you for sharing. What kind of turn-around time would be practical? Could you point me to any typeset mathematica

Interesting! I never thought about this, thank you for sharing. What kind of turn-around time would be practical? Could you point me to any typeset mathematical braille that would be an example of a solution to your problem? Is Nemeth the only important standard, or are others important for you too? I'm wondering if it's practical to set this up as back-office work here in Vietnam. There are some outlying provinces here where there are very few job opportunities. Job opportunities for the blind also round down to zero here (e.g. I could hire for proofreading). Maybe there's room to do something cool here.

kkylin 3y ago
Our textbook of choice didn't have a braille version, so we sent it out to be converted one chapter at a time. Since textbooks don't change often, a turn-around of weeks is not so bad if we knew the students were going to be in the course. What would be very useful for me to be able to typeset myself are small things -- homework, quizzes, and (to a lesser extent) exams. Since homework and quizzes often have to adapt to what I actually covered in class, which may or may not match the syllabus, it's hard to rely on sending this out to be typset by others. (Exams are a little easier since they're usually done days ahead of the actual date.) AFAIK Nemeth is the only standard that matters. If I can typeset a document, send it to the student, and they can get it on a braille display (no need for this to be on paper), it would solve a ton of problems.
miki123211 3y ago
How's English proficiency (and American braille code proficiency) like in Vietnam? Keep in mind that most blind people who speak English fluently but don't live in an English-speaking country (myself included) can't read English braille, or at least not well. Because of how voluminous Braille is, it uses contractions, single characters that replace common words and character combinations like "the", "would", "ing" or "ed". Those tend to be language specific, never taught outside their country or countries of use, and hard to get accessible electronic materials for. The math codes are completely different too, we use something derived from Marburg, while English-speaking countries use Nemeth. Even basic characters like + and - differ between those two, not to mention more complicated structures. It's not just the dot patterns that are different but also the design principles, like where you put spaces or when you can omit "begin fraction" / "end fraction" characters.

kkylin 3y ago

Our textbook of choice didn't have a braille version, so we sent it out to be converted one chapter at a time. Since textbooks don't change often, a turn-around of weeks is not so bad if we knew the students were going to be in the course. What would be very useful for me to be able to typeset myself are small things -- homework, quizzes, and (to a lesser extent) exams. Since homework and quizzes often have to adapt to what I actually covered in class, which may or may not match the syllabus, it's hard to rely on sending this out to be typset by others. (Exams are a little easier since they're usually done days ahead of the actual date.) AFAIK Nemeth is the only standard that matters. If I can typeset a document, send it to the student, and they can get it on a braille display (no need for this to be on paper), it would solve a ton of problems.

miki123211 3y ago

How's English proficiency (and American braille code proficiency) like in Vietnam? Keep in mind that most blind people who speak English fluently but don't live in an English-speaking country (myself included) can't read English braille, or at least not well. Because of how voluminous Braille is, it uses contractions, single characters that replace common words and character combinations like "the", "would", "ing" or "ed". Those tend to be language specific, never taught outside their country or countries of use, and hard to get accessible electronic materials for. The math codes are completely different too, we use something derived from Marburg, while English-speaking countries use Nemeth. Even basic characters like + and - differ between those two, not to mention more complicated structures. It's not just the dot patterns that are different but also the design principles, like where you put spaces or when you can omit "begin fraction" / "end fraction" characters.