In our survey of senior secondary maths students who are blind or have low vision (BLV), reading equations stood out as the most significant challenge. This project is building an accessible digital workbook that lets BLV students work with and share mathematics, calculations and graphics, together with their teachers and classmates. I lead the technical development.
The workbook
The workbook is being built as a web app that brings existing open-source mathematics software together in a single platform. Students will be able to enter maths as:
- Unified English Braille (UEB)
- LaTeX
- an interactive equation editor
- HTML and MathML
and read it back as UEB braille, speech, print, graphics on a refreshable tactile display, sonification or visual images. Multiple views of the same content let students, teachers and classmates work together on the same material.
How we’re working
We’re using human-centred co-design with partners across the education and accessibility sectors in Australia. So far that has included forums with maths educators, a survey of senior maths students, and one-on-one stakeholder consultations.
Partners
Monash University (lead), the University of Southern Queensland, the Victorian, NSW and Queensland Departments of Education, South Pacific Educators in Vision Impairment (SPEVI), the Round Table on Information Access for People with Print Disabilities, and Vision Australia. The full project team is listed on the Accessible Maths website.
If you teach or study senior maths and are blind or have low vision, or work with students who are, find out how to get involved.