More accessible math: The LEAN math notation

Abstract

Blind people generally access written information linearly - through Braille or speech/audio. Math can be written in linear form, e.g. LaTeX, MathML, computer programming languages, or word descriptions. These forms are too verbose to be practical for reading any but the simplest math equations. They are even worse for authoring or "doing pencil and paper math". Braille is more useful, but relatively few blind people are fluent in any of the many special Braille math codes, none of which is robust enough for back-translation to be useful for authoring math. The authors of this paper have developed a very compact notation, which could be the basis of a new math Braille font, but which is useful today for reading / writing using computers with all common speech screen readers. Translators to/from MathML have been written and integrated with Microsoft Word / MathType. Preliminary usability data will be reported. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.