SPEAKING OF MATHEMATICS
Brian Hayes · 1996
Computers, and networks of computers, have opened up a new channel of communication for people who are blind or visually impaired. Much information stored and transmitted in electronic form---including vast streams of text that flow over the Internet---can be made accessible to the visually impaired reader through a computer equipped with a nonvisual output device. This device commonly takes the form of a text-to-speech transducer that reads aloud the content of a display screen. Compared with other media such as tape-recorded books and Braille publications, computerized sources of information offer the important advantages of immediacy and independence: Visually disabled readers get the information as soon as anyone else does, and they can get at it without assistance. Text-to-speech systems work reasonably well with plain, linear prose, like that found in most newspaper articles and electronic-mail messages. But what about the visually impaired student of mathematics or computer science or engineering, whose reading matter may well include more-challenging constructs?