Gopal Gupta: “Science/Math Accessibility Through Notation Translation”

Gopal Gupta, University of Texas at Dallas and Logical Software Solutions, USA

E-mail: gupta [at] utdallas.edu

We argue that the problem of accessibility can be viewed purely as the problem of notation translation: visually impaired individuals differ from sighted individuals in that the two use different notations for reading and writing. The notations used by the two groups differ only in syntax, they represent the same semantics. We therefore argue that the solution to the accessibility problem lies in building powerful semantics-preserving translators that can be used for converting notations used by the sighted to those used by the visually-impaired, and vice versa. Such automatic translators will ease the communication bottle-neck between the two groups, a major hurdle in Science/Math accessibility. We discuss the challenges in building these translators.