A study of speech versus braille and large print of mathematical expressions

Abstract

Several systems have been developed that allow mathematical expressions to be spoken and navigated. This paper describes studies involving the latest revision of the most widely used system: MathPlayer 4. This version includes features to allow navigation of mathematical expressions. Students with blindness or low vision used NVDA + MathPlayer to read Microsoft Word documents with math problems in them. The results were compared with the same students reading similar documents using their favorite modality (braille or large print). The results showed that speech augmented with navigation resulted in similar comprehension rates compared to when students used their preferred modality. This is an important finding because electronic documents are often available in situations where braille or large print documents are not.