Welcome to the homepage for latex-access

latex-access

The latex-access project is designed to provide a realtime translation of a line of LaTeX in to braille, concentrating on the Nemeth code, whichh can be read on a refreshable braille display. This will greatly improve the ease of use of LaTeX to blind mathematicians and scientists. The project also translates the current line into english speech which is easier to listen to than LaTeX source.

Note that this project is largely aimed at people wishing to read LaTeX using a refreshable braille display and/or speech synthesisor[B, and people who will probably want to edit LaTeX documents. For example, as a university student, I receive my worksheets in LaTeX format, and produce my work using LaTeX. Using the latex_access scripts, I am able to get a fairly good translation of the question and then an on-the-fly translation of my work as I produce it. If you are not concerned with editing LaTeX documents and simply want a braille translation of an entire laTeX document, then this project is not for you.

To gain a good understanding of this project and its aims, we strongly suggest that you read all of this page.

A plea for developers

There is only one person actively developing the source code for this project. As the project is aimed at a specific and limited audiance, we do not expect to find hundreds of developers. However if you feel that the project will help you and are able to contribute in some way, please get in touch (see below). The project is largely written in the Python interpreted language. However the frontend to any screenreader needs to be written in the language of that individual screenreader.

Why the need for the project latex_access?

It is widely thought that LaTeX is a good system for a blind mathematician or scientist to use to create and read scientific documents, as it is a linear code and so the user does not have to perceive two-dimensional concepts, such as fractions and column vectors.
By reading this linear code, a blind person can take in and understand scientific documents in the same way that a sighted person would do by studying a printed document.

It should be noted that normally, laTeX is just a source from which documents are converted in to an attractive-looking, typeset document that can be printed or viewed on screen, often in a .pdf, .dvi or .ps format. For various technical reasons, documents in such formats are currently inaccessible with current screen-reading technology. The best current sollution therefore is not to concern ourselves with documents in these formats, but rather to read and interpret the LaTeX source code itself.

Reading a laTeX document

It is entirely possible to read a LaTeX document simply by reading the LaTeX source itself. This however, is often a time-consuming and pain-staking process, and it is often not particularly nice to read. For example, the LaTeX source for the quadratic formula is
$$x=\frac{-b\pm\sqrt{b^2-4ac}}{2a}$$
It is therefore the aim of the project to translate a line of LaTeX in to a line of Niemeth braille code, which can be read using a refreshable braille display. The project also aims to provide an audible translation of the LaTeX source which will be output through current screen-reading technology, and eventually programs such as emacspeak under unix.

Current features

latex-access currently contains the following features.

Translation of several mathematical expressions from LaTeX to Niemeth braille. These include, but are not confined to:
- Translation of fractions, both numerical and algebraic.
- Translation of trigonometric functions and hyperbolic functions.
- Translation of powers, including square roots.
- Translation of expressions used in calculus, including partial derivatives.
- Translation of two component and three component column vectors, not in to Niemeth braille format but in to a row vector so that they can be read on a single line braille display.
- Translation of several mathematical symbols, such as the Greek letters.
- Many commands used to create a visually attractive document are either translated or ignored, often it is not necessary to see some formatting commands.
Translation of several of the above to audible speech.
A matrix browser feature to enable easier reading of larger matrices in LaTeX, see the description below.
Support for custom defined LaTeX commands.

The matrix browser

As most refreshable braille displays are currently limited to one line, manipulating matrices (EG multiplication) simply by reading LaTeX source code poses a problem, as we often need to see elements in different rows of a matrix at the same time. For smaller matrices we can usually do this by memorising the matrix, however for larger matrices (usually 3 by 3 and above), this becomes impossible. Therefore we have developed a browser interface which greatly eases the stress involved in performing matrix operations. For instructions on using the matrix browser, click here, or see the readme file.

Features for the future

The following are features that we hope to implement in the future. Help from any developers would be much appreciated.

Further extension of the table of Niemeth symbols. We would like to extend the table to cover:
- More symbols that are used throughout mathematics.
- Many other things!
Implementation of latex_access in to other platforms and through other screen readers other than jaws. We would like to implement latex_access in to brltty under linux in jue course.
Further development of the speech output which has only recently been ported to Python.
Implementation of cursor rooting on braille displays, this is currently not possible. One could root the cursor to the desired braille cell which would root the on-screen cursor to the appropriate LaTeX.

Obtaining the scripts

The scripts are currently only available through SVN. The URL for the repository is https://latex-access.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/latex-access

Although following the above link will take you to the web version of the repository, we recommend you use an svn client. For Windows, Tortoise SVN is very simple to use.

Who to contact

Currently there are only two people involved in latex_access, and only one actively able to write the Python code. We are Robin Williams (in charge of administrating the project and performing some basic tasks such as adding symbols to the translation table), and Alastair Irving (who has written the bulk of the scripts). If you are interested in helping to develop the project, even in a small way, please Email us Last edit:
10/11/2007
by Alastair Irving.