Sample ED TF Use Case

[pbelfanti58]

“Title”: Extracting Math from Digital Publications

User Story / Details

As a blind student studying mathematics in college I can purchase a digital copy of my mathematics text book and have my assistive technology (AT) (Screen Reader and Braille Display) help me access the text within the digital book. Where I run into problems is depending on the book either there are images of the complex math equations without any textual description, or if there is a textual description it says “Math Equation”, and I must rely on sighted assistance to copy that math into some other software which allows me to explore the equation with my AT.

Possible Solution

Lately newer textbooks are starting to include MathML where I can explore the equation and all the parts which is wonderful, but depending on the Reading System this can be cumbersome and there is no way to extract this math into applications that I am more familiar with in reading/writing math equations.

At school I use LaTeX for all my classes, and ideally I would love to be able to when I encounter a math equation in my textbook extract that equation and bring it in my LaTeX editor so I can fully understand the equation and work on solving it.

Additional Benefits

As a side benefit all students would benefit from being able to quickly copy the math equation to their math editors of choice without transcription errors.

Considerations

Could we include a button to copy the Math equation out of this EPUB, is there copyright issues or is this fair use?

Upon extraction be able to convert MathML into LaTex or vice versa

Publishers may already have LaTeX format of the MathML how should we handle this?

Should publishers include both LaTeX and MathML as well as a textual based description of the Math?