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I have a chronic visual handicap and am in need of adequate level of accessibility support while learning and teaching mathematics from and to the visually challenged as well as the sighted.

I'm familiar with the JAWS for Windows screen reading program and the MAGic screen magnification program, both developed by the Freedom Scientific Inc. JAWS offer very little access to mathematical text (in fact none for .djvu files), whereas MAGic 9.5's magnification levels of 2x and higher are too big for my liking (as it requires too much of scrolling) and the magnification levels of below 2x tend to make the display less clearly visible.

I'm unable to afford a newer version of MAGic and so have to content myself with the demo version.

As of now, I use the High Contrast Black (Large) display setting in Windows XP, along with the Windows Inverted (Xtra Large) mouse pointer scheme with trail and highlighting-upon-pressing-the-CTRL-key enabled.

I prefer reading books in .djvu format with the contrast enabled, or the .pdf text files with colors replaced by the Windows High Contrast color setting (but struggle to read scanned .pdf documents since the text within those pages appears black on a white background, notwithstanding the High Contrast setting).

Typesetting maths is often too tedious and time consuming for me, whether it be in WinEdit (with MikeTex at the back end) or as MathJex on the Mathematics Stach Exchange website.

I've also download and installed a program called WinTriangle, software developed by a Prof. Frank Gardner of the physics department at the Oregon State University. But I'm not sure how to utilise it.

I'm aware of the BlindMaths mailing list, but over there the information is too spread out! I don't think there is any repository of audio / video tutorials, for example, on how to make the best possible of WinTriangle.

During my teaching of mathematics, I often find myself to be too slow while writing on the board. Often, Drawing figures also proves to be too uphill a task. I'm not yet finished with a proof and the lecture hour goes by!

I always find myself to be struggling to complete the course.

Here in Pakistan, there is no individual or organisation working on making maths accessible to the blind and visually impaired.

In this backdrop, any advice and suggestions please?

Whatever help and support the SE community could offer would be most appreciated!

(Note: Originally posted on SU; see revisions for details.)

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    $\begingroup$ Welcome to the site! It is quite uncommon to post requests for answering questions on another site. I would prefer you would ask an actual question here too (even if it might be very similar). Here is a somewhat related question we had that does not answer your question though: How do blind people learn mathematics $\endgroup$
    – quid
    Commented Jul 16, 2015 at 9:06
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    $\begingroup$ Also, your question there seems to contain at least two questions (learning maths while visually impared, and teaching maths while visually impared). I believe these may well have different answers, so should be asked separately. $\endgroup$
    – Jessica B
    Commented Jul 16, 2015 at 10:32
  • $\begingroup$ Unfortunately when I followed the link the question had been removed. I am voting to close because it is no longer possible to know what you asked but if you actually ask a question here I would vote to reopen,. $\endgroup$
    – Amy B
    Commented May 26, 2016 at 10:28
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    $\begingroup$ Completely agree with @quid and here is another related question on this site: matheducators.stackexchange.com/q/10716/1217 $\endgroup$
    – Amir Asghari
    Commented May 26, 2016 at 13:37
  • $\begingroup$ Thank you for expanding the post. I reopened it; and removed the 'dead' link. $\endgroup$
    – quid
    Commented May 26, 2016 at 18:02

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