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Access to Mathematics and Science - @Science Workshop in Paris

On Wednesday, February 27, 2008 at the Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris, took place the @Science Workshop entitled "Access to Mathematics and Science".

Follow the links in the schedule of the Workshop to find the abstracts of the presentations and the slides of the presenters.
Should you have any trouble in accessing the slide, send an email to admin [at] ascience.eu, telling what format you need.

Workshop Program

8.30 – 9.00 - Welcome, registration

Session 1

Chair: Dominique Archambault, Université Pierre et Marie Curie

9.00 – 9.15 Introduction to @Science and the goals of the day - Cristian Bernareggi, Valeria Brigatti, Università degli Studi di Milano, Biblioteca di Informatica (Italy)

9.15 – 10.45 - Input statements 1: Preparing

People who are blind need to access documents using alternative modalities, namely Braille and speech. This applies as well for Maths as for any kind of documents. Braille specific notations have been developed to represent mathematics. In order to reduce the length of formulas (compared to linear formulas), that is to reduce the number of characters and so facilitate understanding, Braille Mathematical notations use complex strategies. To further complicate things, these Braille Mathematical notations have been developed in different countries, according to the linguistic and cultural history of these countries. Therefore, while the mainstream (visual) representation of formulas is identical in every language, the same is not true for Braille notations. Indeed each Braille Mathematical notation is widely used in its zone of linguistic influence, while it is completely unknown in other countries. In other words, a Braille formula written using the British notation is not understandable by a German speaking reader. This problem is quite important since the number of available Braille documents is very small compared to the number of ordinary Maths books. In the last 10 years a number of projects have been developed to facilitate the production of Braille documents. Using accessible formats should facilitate this production.

10.45 - 11.15 - Coffee break

Session 2

Chair: Cristian Bernareggi, Università degli Studi di Milano

11.15 – 12.15 - Input statements 2: Reading

The first step to do Maths is to access to Mathematical content, that is to be able to read Mathematical expressions and to understand them. Modalities usable by visually impaired people – and more widely by print disabled people – share the same characteristic: they are intrinsically linear. Then complex expressions are often very long and difficult to understand. Software tools may provide some very useful help to these users to access and to learn.

12.15 - 13.45 - Lunch

Session 3

Chair: Klaus Miesenberger, Johannes Kepler Universitat Linz

13.45 – 14.30 - Input statements 3: Doing

The last part of the workshop will be dedicated to software which provide some support to blind people actually doing Mathematical work. This software provide support functions helping the users to enter maths contents, to modify expressions, to carry branches of expressions, or to calculate, simplify etc...

14.45 - 16.00 - Demonstrations

  • MaWEn by Klaus Miesenberger, Johannes Kepler Universitat Linz - klaus.miesenberger at jku.at - Institute Integriert Studieren website; find the abstract in the previous section.
  • MathPlayer by Neil Soiffer, Design Science - Neils at dessci.com - Design Science website; find the abstract in the previous section.
  • ReadMath by Laurent Ricq et Chang Chung, EuroBraille - boutique at eurobraille.fr -
  • EuroBraille Website; Presentation of the ReadMath software.
  • Infty system by Toshihiro Kanahori, Tsukuba University of Technology - kanahori at k.tsukuba-tech.ac.jp - Infty Projects website; find the abstract in the previous section.
  • The LAMBDA system by Enrico Bortolazzi, Veia Progetti - bortolazzi at veia.it - LAMBDA Project website; find the abstract in the previous section.
  • The Braille Insight System: Towards Completely Automatic Back-translation of Nemeth Code by Gopal Gupta, University of Texas at Dallas and Logical Software Solutions - gupta at utdallas.edu - Logical Software Solutions website; We present the Braille Insight system, a Windows-based software system for completely automatic translation of Nemeth Braille code to LATEX. The Braille Insight system takes hard copy Braille input containing Mathematics (written in Nemeth Braille code) and text (written in contracted Braille) via a scanner, performs image recognition and analysis of the scanned file to generate the ASCII Braille file, automatically separates Nemeth Braille coded expressions and contracted Braille text, back-translates them to LATEX math expressions and LATEX text respectively, and produces a print output file in PDF format containing the result of back-translation. The Braille Insight system comes with tools that allow users to manually intervene during each step, if they desire, to fix any errors reported by the system or seen by the user.

16.00 - 16.30 - Coffee Break

Session 4

Chair: Donal Fitzpatrick, Dublin City University

16.30 – 17.30 - Panel discussion

17.30 - 17.45 - Summary by Olga Caprotti, University of Helsinki

17.45 - 18.00 - Conclusion and future plans