Re: Why do screen readers struggle to read math?
@Camlorn, I think this is a cultural difference here. Bare in mind in Britain universities are already struggling for cash anyway (one reason student fees are so insane and getting insanerer), and will reffuse disabled students places if they believe the expense or inconvenience factor is too great (I have known it happen).
Also remember in Britain no student is forced! to go to university and do maths, indeed at one university which shal remain nameless, *Cough! York *Cough! I was told "why are you studdying philosophy, why don't you do computer science that is what blind people usually do and the stuff is already prepared"
Equally, bare in mind in Britain even if the process of funding works correctly, it is the student! who is given their own personal grant for equipment, not the university who must provide for some hypothetical disabled students. Depending upon how the over all battle goes, the university's disability services might reci eve the student's individual grant and distribute it, or the student might get some say over it (in my case sinse the disability service at Durham are morons I completely administrated my own). This means rather than the university having to purchice the braille embosser and fund someone using it, it's left up to either the student themselves to arrange accessible material be created, or the university to pay an external agency to provide materials out of the student's own disabled student's allowance, like the Rnib, ---- indeed the Rnib have quite the nice monopoly going on braille creation. This is what one totally blind doctor off Chemistry I know did.
Ultimately a university would be very! unlikely to use several thousand quid to purchice their own embosser for some hypothetical future blind students, and the individual grant any specific blind student might have would not be enough to afford one of their own (and even if they did, they'd take it w ith them when they left the university).
Equally however, this system isn't perhaps as unfare as you might think, ---- well not if you don't count the university disability services often laying down the law on what a disabled student can or cannot do with their own grant. In the Uk, people are required to either buy their own text books or borrow them from the university library (and there is no guarantee on that). While subjects like maths and science will print out papers and exercises for students, the actual text books will not be.
The plane fact is while Braille production perhaps is not expensive for an institution, it is! for an individual, (disabled student grants are not that generous), and at least in the Uk, universities work far more on an individualistic level even as far as sighted students go, ---- indeed I'm personally not in favour of those disability services who try and tell! a student what they should spend their own grant money on as though an institution would know better than the individual person themselves what they need for their own educational needs.
This is why Cx2 is correct in his "Be realistic" statement, at least as far as universities in Britain go. yes, it would be awsome if everywhere owned braille embossers, but the plane truth is they don't, and on an individual level the dam things are too expensive.
This is another reason I'd love to see a comparatively cheap, (ie under usd 500), full screen tactile display in the future, sinse far more people could afford and use it on an individual level and we'd have none of these wars with institutions or monopolising so called charities.
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