Mathematics: How and what to speak

Abstract

Access to mathematical content for blind and vision impaired people continues to be a problem. The inherently visual nature of this form of presentation is neither easily or readily accessible using the linear representations in common usage by this community. This paper proposes methodology for depicting mathematics in a nonvisual manner. It will be shown how, through the prosodic component found in spoken language, the structure of mathematical formulae may be disambiguated. We will also discuss lexical cues which can be added to the utterance to further reduce the ambiguity which can be very evident in this form of material. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.