Books for Blind Scientists: The Technological Requirements of Accessibility

Abstract

INTRODUCTION Computer technology is revolutionizing information accessibility, and few people have benefitted more than those with severe visual impairments. Voice synthesizers and computer Braille displays allow blind people to read computer text as easily as sighted people do. Computer Braille translators allow Braille documents of a large amount standard literature to be printed directly from word processor files. Computerized reader services provide news, weather, sports, stock reports, and other information by telephone. Unfortunately easy access to computerized information has been largely restricted to words. The information revolution has barely touched the problem of access by blind people to and science, fields whose literature cannot be represented adequately by words alone. Blind people presently have only three realistic options for reading literature containing scientific notation--human readers, tape recordings, or Braille. Because human readers are expensive and seldom reliable, high quality tape recordings are generally preferable. Recording for the Blind, a nonprofit company based in Princeton, New Jersey, maintains a large library of textbook tape recordings. For many years RFB has been a critically important source of accessible textbooks for many blind students. RFB will record any book on request, but a lead time of many months is required. Tape books are most useful for materials that can be read from beginning to end. For science and books in which the reader must frequently refer to equations, tables, appendices, etc., tape recordings are a poor substitute for a book. Standard Braille is inadequate for science and math. It does not even have symbols for plus or equals. A special math Braille code is used for math, but it is not really adequate for such subjects as chemistry, physics, or engineering. Unlike printed mathematical and scientific notation, which is more or less internationally standardized, the Braille codes used in the United States and the United Kingdom are different, and both differ substantially from codes used in non-English-speaking countries. Most blind people do not read Braille, and only a very small percentage of those people read Braille. Blind children find it particularly difficult to learn because they must first learn a separate Braille language. Another problem is that almost all literature involving scientific notation must be Brailled by hand, and very few Braillists know the code. Only the most common K-12 and science texts are routinely translated. Other texts can often be obtained only by contracting with a Braille transcriber. This is expensive and requires along lead time. NEW TECHNOLOGIES Three new developments can potentially revolutionize accessibility to and science literature by people with severe visual and learning disabilities. None of these technologies can provide ready access to printed books, but information that is available in high-level computer files can be readily accessed. One of these new technologies is the AsTeR computer program (Raman 1992, Barry 1994) (described in this journal by its developer, Dr. T. V. Raman. A World Wide Web (WWW) demo of AsTeR is available at: http://www.cs.cornell.edu/Info/People/raman/aster/demo.html. Dotsplus, a method for producing hard copy scientific literature, is another important development. Developed at Oregon State University, Dotsplus is described briefly later in this article. Visual examples of Dotsplus documents are given in Gardner (1993), and are available to Internet users at a World Wide Web site: http://dots.physics.orst.edu/dotsplus.html. Tactile examples are available from the authors on request. Finally, the utility of Braille for scientific literature should be greatly enhanced by a fundamental Braille reform being considered by the International Committee on English Braille (ICEB). …

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