Braille Live

Access2Science
7/14/2011
Today’s post is a guest post by John Gardner on a topic that is especially apt with the preparations for Youth Slam in full swing – STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math)resources:

I’d like to invite you to visit the new http://www.access2science.com/ web site. It is devoted to practical guidance for accessing STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math). Its intended audience is blind people, their friends, parents, teachers, and service providers. It is run by four volunteer editors, all blind professionals. Other volunteers help by writing articles and suggesting links. Please join the A2S family.

Presently the A2S site has

The following articles on methods for reading and writing STEM documents, and for converting STEM documents to braille and other formats.
Introduction to the Infty Reader Math OCR Application
“Embossing Math” using MS Word, MathType, TSS
Embossing Tables” using MS Word, Excel, TSS
Duxbury Braille Translator
Braille Math Codes
Accessible Math Authoring Applications
Authoring/Reading Web Math
Authoring Math” using MS Word, MathType
Links to educational and professional information and services relevant to STEM and people with disabilities.
Links to mainstream web sites with accessible books, articles, and tutorials on STEM topics.Topics include
Mathematics (Algebra I and II, Geometry, and Calculus)
Chemistry
Physics
Econometrics
Statistics
Scientific Computing
General Science, Technology, and some relevant non STEM subjects.
Tutorials and tables on mainstream math languages, including:
Table of unicode math symbols
Tables of Latex math commands and symbols
Link to a Latex tutorial
Link to a MathML tutorial
Tutorial on using the TX4HT Latex to XHTML/MathML converter
Introduction to MathML in DAISY.
Some helpful technical vocabulary for a number of non-English speakers.
Clearly there is a lot more needed before A2S will be a one stop STEM access information center, but I think and hope you will find it pretty useful already. Please consider contributing to this information. In particular, the site needs articles and links on math and science for the lower elementary grades. Contact information for the editors is given on the web site for criticism, suggestions, and offers to contribute.

by John Gardner
Prof Emeritus of Physics, Oregon State University and President, ViewPlus