From "Nelson H. F. Beebe " Wed Jun 27 17:57:06 1990 Flags: 000000000001 Return-Path: <@MATH.AMS.COM:BEEBE@science.utah.edu> Received: from MATH.AMS.COM by science.utah.edu with TCP; Wed 27 Jun 90 17:57:03-MDT Received: from science.utah.edu by MATH.AMS.COM via SMTP with TCP; Wed, 27 Jun 90 19:57:21-EDT Mail-From: BEEBE created at 27-Jun-90 14:09:09 Date: Wed 27 Jun 90 14:09:09-MDT From: "Nelson H. F. Beebe" Subject: TeX support for the Blind and Print Disabled To: MALCOLM%icrf.ac.uk@CS.UTAH.EDU, tug-board@SEED.AMS.COM, ma.gustafson@SCIENCE.utah.edu, nahaj@CC.UTAH.EDU cc: Beebe@SCIENCE.utah.edu X-US-Mail: "Center for Scientific Computing, South Physics, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112" X-Telephone: (801) 581-5254 Message-ID: <12601220056.33.BEEBE@SCIENCE.utah.edu> ReSent-Date: Wed 27 Jun 90 17:25:30-MDT ReSent-From: "Nelson H. F. Beebe" ReSent-To: tug-board@math.ams.com ReSent-Message-ID: <12601255799.33.BEEBE@SCIENCE.utah.edu> I've just had a long and interesting telephone conversation with George Kerscher Computerized Books for the Blind and Print Disabled 52 Corbin Hall University of Montana Missoula, MT 59812 Tel: (406) 243-5481 E-mail: in a couple of weeks This is actually a small company operating at the University with U.S. National Science Foundation support for the production of (technical) books that can be read or listened to by visually handicapped (blind, partially sighted, or dyslexic) people. Users can employ text-to-speech systems, or view enlarged letters, or for the dyslexic, screens with shorter lines, and words highlighted with the first character in bold or bright to help the brain get the character order right. The U.S. Government requires that all vendors of computer equipment sold to the government make their documentation available in `ASCII form' for just such purposes. There is some confusion at present what `ASCII form' means, but for now, word processor (of which Word Perfect is the most common) formats are handled by filtering out control bytes. They are looking to using SGML in the future, and for mathematics, TeX. They are also interested in acquiring public-domain implementations of TeX. The company has contracts with IBM, DEC, Apple, and Borland to get machine-readable texts of manuals and make them available to an audience of about 800. Brian Kernighan of C and Software Tools fame is on the board of directors. I made several suggestions to George. One was the TeXinfo and LaTeXinfo systems from the Free Software Foundation which partly solve the problem of getting both typeset and 24x80 ASCII on-line output from the same input. A second was to talk to Ed Fox at the University of Virginia, who is involved with the ACM electronic documentation project. A third was to come and give a talk next summer at TUG91, and to write articles for TUGboat. A fourth was to look at the files tex-for-*.* texbook*.* on the anonymous FTP login directory on science.utah.edu for sources of TeX and TeX literature. The question I have for all of you now is, apart from Malcolm's letter @Article{Clark:TB5-2-146, author = "Malcolm Clark", title = "{{Mathematical communication with a deaf and blind student using \TeX}}", journal = TUGboat, year = "1984", volume = "5", number = "2", pages = "146", month = Nov, } 6 years ago, has anything else happened with TeX that would be relevant to George's project? I've never actively followed discussions of computers for the handicapped, and so cannot contribute much myself. ------- From UCIR001@FRORS31.BITNET Thu Jun 28 05:32:18 1990 Flags: 000000000011 Return-Path: Received: from CC.UTAH.EDU by science.utah.edu with TCP; Thu 28 Jun 90 05:32:16-MDT Received: from CUNYVM.BITNET by CC.UTAH.EDU; Thu, 28 Jun 90 05:29 MDT Received: from FRORS31.BITNET (UCIR001) by CUNYVM.BITNET (Mailer R2.03B) with BSMTP id 8730; Thu, 28 Jun 90 07:28:58 EDT Date: 90/06/28 at 13H09M43 (French time) From: UCIR001@FRORS31.BITNET Subject: re:..for the Blind To: BEEBE@SCIENCE.UTAH.EDU Message-id: <723FF239BFFF80032C@CC.UTAH.EDU> Return-Receipt-To: UCIR001@FRORS31.BITNET X-Envelope-to: BEEBE@SCIENCE.UTAH.EDU This is not really a response to your message, but it happens that yesterday i received the woman who manage the ministerial agency for the Blind. What I'd like to say is that: 1- There are very good sensitive keyboards for the Blind which are connected on the parallel port of PC. It seems that this material is quite unknown in US. This is an input/output device on which the blind man can type is characters (braille like on 6 bits) and can "see" all ascii chars on the screen via sensitive pins (in 8 bits) on the keyboard. 2- Blind student are very interested with TeX/LaTeX because they are able to print their homeworks. Specially usefull for scientific students of universities. I've initiated an experience with the daughter of the pre-cited woman. 3- GUTenberg has also few members of a Blind association. I think they are starting also. So i'm interested by hot news on the topic. (I didn't know Malcolm's letter, I will read it carefuly). Bernard GAULLE From "b beeton " Thu Jun 28 05:56:59 1990 Flags: 000000000001 Return-Path: Received: from SEED.AMS.COM by science.utah.edu with TCP; Thu 28 Jun 90 05:56:49-MDT Date: Thu 28 Jun 90 07:55:37-EDT From: b beeton Subject: Re: TeX support for the Blind and Print Disabled To: Beebe@SCIENCE.UTAH.EDU cc: tug-board@MATH.AMS.COM In-Reply-To: <12601220056.33.BEEBE@SCIENCE.utah.edu> Message-ID: <12601392354.43.BNB@SEED.AMS.COM> i also had a long and interesting talk with george kerscher, and (in fact) suggested that he call nelson. i recall that, at the meeting in montreal, helmut j\"urgensen (of the university of western ontario) and several of his students had posters on projects they'd been working on, and one of them dealt with the matter of transforming tex into braille. i gave george helmut's name too. i also remember that there have in the past been a few tug members who listed an interest in the use of tex by the blind. i will ask the tug office to scan the database to see if they can uncover any current listings, but i'm not at all sure the database is set up to permit retrieval on that field. -- bb ------- From "Nelson H. F. Beebe " Thu Jun 28 09:11:37 1990 Flags: 000000000001 Mail-From: BEEBE created at 28-Jun-90 09:11:32 Date: Thu 28 Jun 90 09:11:31-MDT From: "Nelson H. F. Beebe" Subject: Re: re:..for the Blind To: UCIR001%FRORS31.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU cc: Beebe@SCIENCE.utah.edu In-Reply-To: <723FF239BFFF80032C@CC.UTAH.EDU> X-US-Mail: "Center for Scientific Computing, South Physics, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112" X-Telephone: (801) 581-5254 Message-ID: <12601428018.19.BEEBE@SCIENCE.utah.edu> Merci bien des remarques sur l'emploi de TeX pour les aveugles, Bernard! ------- From JPC@CARLETON.CA Fri Jun 29 16:52:13 1990 Flags: 000000000011 Return-Path: <@MATH.AMS.COM,@ugw.utcs.utoronto.ca:JPC@CARLETON.CA> Received: from MATH.AMS.COM by science.utah.edu with TCP; Fri 29 Jun 90 16:51:57-MDT Received: from ugw.utcs.utoronto.ca by MATH.AMS.COM via SMTP with TCP; Fri, 29 Jun 90 18:28:29-EDT Received: from CARLETON.CA (stdin) by ugw.utcs.utoronto.ca with SMTP id 59218; Fri, 29 Jun 90 18:24:23 EDT Received: by CARLETON (Mailer) id 39422061474; Fri, 29 Jun 90 17:44:46 EST Date: Fri, 29 Jun 90 18:31:31 EDT Reply-To: christina_thiele@CARLETON.CA Message-Id: <900629.17433328.044883@ADMIN.CP6> From: JPC@CARLETON.CA Subject: TeX for the blind... To: tug-board@math.ams.COM Robert Batzinger (the fellow from Thailand who's paper never made it into last year's Proceedings) had also done something on this. His current address is: 16 Orchid Drive (Barb, I think I wrote `Dahlia' when you asked for the address... it seems to be `Orchid'), Singapore 2057. As well, there was a query put up in TeXhax by Victor Eijkhout, who then posted the information he subsequently received. I'll reproduce it below. A while back, I asked if people had ever done something with Braille typesetting in TeX. A few people responded. Thanks in particular, Malcolm, Hellmuth, and Dick. Here's what tangible information I have got. 1/ At the university of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada N6A 5B7, R. Arrabito and H. J\"urgenson have written a report: Computerized Braille Typesetting, Report 180 of the Department of Computer Science. This is a 10-page introduction to TeX and Braille, and a survey of their translation project so far. I give a quote from the introduction: ``In fact, we are inclined to con- clude that the very structure of the TeX language and the Braille transcription rules prohibit a universal translation algorithm.'' No email addresses of the authors are known. 2/ In Germany, Dr. Gerd-D.Barg (again only a physical address: Fernuniversitaet Hagen, D-5900 Hagen 1, Germany) has devel- oped a Braille font and LaTeX style file, that are used for course ware at the University of Hagen. This font (only 300 dpi pxl/pk) can be obtained from the listserver in Heidelberg: listserv@dhdurz1.bitnet That's it. Victor Eijkhout I sent Victor a short note saying that J\"urgenson was actually a TUG member and that the TUG directory did provide a email address: helmut@uwovax.bitnet. Now, this info is about a year old, but perhaps it could be added to what Barb -- and others -- already have. ...I *knew* there was a reason I was printing up all these mail messages.... hundreds and hundreds of the things... ;-)) Christina Thiele From "mackay@cs.washington.edu (Pierre MacKay)" Sun Jul 1 14:18:38 1990 Flags: 000000000001 Return-Path: Received: from june.cs.washington.edu by science.utah.edu with TCP; Sun 1 Jul 90 14:18:33-MDT Received: by june.cs.washington.edu (5.61/7.0jh) id AA19073; Sun, 1 Jul 90 13:16:10 -0700 Date: Sun, 1 Jul 90 13:16:10 -0700 From: mackay@cs.washington.edu (Pierre MacKay) Return-Path: Message-Id: <9007012016.AA19073@june.cs.washington.edu> To: Beebe@SCIENCE.utah.edu Cc: MALCOLM%icrf.ac.uk@CS.UTAH.EDU, tug-board@SEED.AMS.COM, ma.gustafson@SCIENCE.utah.edu, nahaj@CC.UTAH.EDU, Beebe@SCIENCE.utah.edu In-Reply-To: "Nelson H. F. Beebe"'s message of Wed 27 Jun 90 14:09:09-MDT <12601220056.33.BEEBE@SCIENCE.utah.edu> Subject: TeX support for the Blind and Print Disabled I am forwarding this to one of our faculty who has been very active in developing (non-TeX) communications for the deaf-blind community. Pierre From "Nelson H. F. Beebe " Tue Jul 3 14:08:10 1990 Flags: 000000000001 Mail-From: BEEBE created at 3-Jul-90 14:07:51 Date: Tue 3 Jul 90 14:07:50-MDT From: "Nelson H. F. Beebe" Subject: Re: TeX for the blind... To: christina_thiele@CARLETON.CA, tug-board@math.ams.COM cc: Beebe@SCIENCE.utah.edu In-Reply-To: <900629.17433328.044883@ADMIN.CP6> X-US-Mail: "Center for Scientific Computing, South Physics, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112" X-Telephone: (801) 581-5254 Message-ID: <12602792680.36.BEEBE@SCIENCE.utah.edu> Thanks for the additional info on TeX for the blind. I'll forward it by postal mail to Montana. ------- From "Nelson H. F. Beebe " Thu Jul 12 13:40:20 1990 Flags: 000000000001 Mail-From: BEEBE created at 12-Jul-90 13:40:19 Date: Thu 12 Jul 90 13:40:19-MDT From: "Nelson H. F. Beebe" Subject: Paper on Braille typesetting To: beebe@SCIENCE.utah.edu X-US-Mail: "Center for Scientific Computing, South Physics, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112" X-Telephone: (801) 581-5254 Message-ID: <12605146965.21.BEEBE@SCIENCE.utah.edu> For the record, note this paper: @string{EPODD = "Electronic Publishing\emdash{}Origination, Dissemination, and Design"} @Article{Arrabito:EPODD-1-2-117, author = "R. Arrabito and H. J{\"{u}}rgensen", title = "Computerized {Braille} Typesetting: Another View of Mark-up Standards", journal = EPODD, year = "1988", volume = "1", number = "2", pages = "117--132", month = sep, } I've posted a photocopy to George Kerscher at the University of Montana. -------