Creating Accessible
Math and Science Materials

Ron Stewart, Director

Northwest Center for Technology Access

Oregon State University

 

The E-Book Process

§      What is your end product going to be?

§     Audio Book

§    With Navigation

§    Analog or Digital

§     Full Text E-Book

§    What File Format

§    What level of Editing

§    What level of Structure

§    Unedited Electronic Files

§     Braille Book

§    What Grade

§    Unbrailleable Content

§    Material Management

§     Mixed Formats

§    Student preference driven

§    Tactile Image Annotations

 

E-text Production  - Nuts and Bolts

§    Decision that need to be made

§   Are you going to produce it?

§   What are you going to produce?

§   What are you going to outsource?

§   What file formats will you use?

§   How will you staff it?

§   How will students access?

§   How will control access?

§   How will you pay for it all?

 

What is Required

§     System for Management and Control

§     Editing Workstations

§     Scanning Workstations

§     High Speed Scanner

§     OCR Software

§     File Conversion Software

§     Guillotine

§     VERY QUALIFIED STAFF

§     Clear understanding of the process

 

Required and Recommended Hardware

§      High Speed Duplexing Scanner

§     Canon, Fujitsu, Panasonic, Kodak

§      Editing Workstations

§     High End PC

§     Ability to Burn CD/DVD

§      Scanning Station

§     The Best you can get

§     SCSI Interface

§     CD/DVD Burner

§      Archival Storage

§      Braille Embosser

§      TIGER Embosser

 

 

Required and Recommended Software

§     Scanner Management Software

§    Canoscan

§     OCR Software

§    Omnipage Pro

§    Abby FineReader

§    K3000

§     Editing Software

§    Office Applications

§    Graphics Manipulation Software

§    PDF Conversion Software

§    Mathematical Editing Software

§    E-book Production Software

 

 

Math and Scientific Notation

§    Math and Symbology

§   Word’s built in equation editor

§   Scientific Notebook

§   Mathtype

§   WinTriangle

§   TIGER Embosser

§   Narrative Descriptions

 

Future Trends in Math and Science

§    Scalable Vector Graphics

§    MathML

§    MathTalk

§    IVEO

 

Getting Ready to Edit  

§    Develop a standard archival process

§    Scan the book by Chapter

§    Save both the Image and RTF files

§    Copy RTF file to text editor

§    Save File in proper format

§   .rtf for TRIANGLE

§   .doc for MATHTYPE and Plain Text

Getting Started 

§     Standardize the font

§     Standardize the page layout

§    Pages numbers

§    Chapter and Section Headings

§    Comment Before and After

§    Sidenotes, Footnotes, and Endnotes

§   Number

§   Associate appropriately

§    Figures, Charts and Graphs

§   Description or Tactile?

§   Number

§   Associate appropriately

§     Remove all “soft” formatting

 

 

 

 

Descriptions or Tactiles

§    Decide the appropriate format

§   What is going to best convey the meaning

§   Enlarge, Describe or annotated Tactile

§    Complete Descriptions!

§    Include all relevant aspects

§   Forces

§   Directions

§   Significant Details

 

Tables, Problems and Theorems

§    Table content is left in the text

§    Tables are converted to text

§    Tab separate table elements

§    Restructure complex tables

§    Keep Material Connected

§   Theorems and Proofs

§   Problems and Solutions

Editing for WinTriangle

§     Edit in Triangle

§    Best End Product

§    Very Time Intensive

§     Edit in Word

§    Requires Specialized Font Set

§    Restricted Key Set

§    Restricted Symbol Set

§    Requires Custom Macros 

§   Fractions, Over/Under Script and Vectors

§    Specialized Math Markup

Specialized Formatting

§    Standardize your procedures

§    Linerize all Notation

§    Label appropriately

§    Additional notation only as specified

§    Quality Control

Equations

§    Original from Textbook

 

 

 

§    After Editing

 

Complex Equations

§    From Textbook

 

 

 

§    After Editing

Matrices

§    From Textbook

 

 

 

§    After Editing

Superscripts and Subscripts

Editing for TIGER

§    Not Screen Reader Friendly

§    Produces DotsPlus Content

§    Requires a TIGER Embosser

§    Create using the Template

§    Use Tiger Font Sets

§    Math Operations in MathType

 

Editing In MathType

§      Use MathType Preference File

§     Standardize Spacing

§     Math Style

§      MathType does not always work

 

 

 

 

 

§      Tables need to be enlarged.

§      Roman Numeral are

§      Graphics are prepared separately and merged

§      Use Global Find/Replace for uniformity