Making Math Accessible

Mobile math accessibility stays at home for now

Android is Google's mobile operating system designed to run on smart phones.  Google announced that Android 1.6 adds accessibility features designed to make Android apps more widely usable by blind and low-vision users. It includes a screen reader and text-to-speech engine. The announcement was made by T.V. Raman, a Research Scientist at Google.  His PhD thesis pioneered work on math accessibility, so there is hope that a future version of Android will support accessible math.  But for now, you'll need to stick to using MathPlayer or one of the DAISY-based solutions on your computer.

Google's new accessibility effort...where's the math?

We've been seeing Google in the news a lot lately. There has been a new challenge to the original Google books settlement and an upcoming hearing is about to take place. Accessibility has always been an important aspect of Google books so it is not surprising to see Google stepping up their overall focus on accessibility just prior to the hearing.

On Google's official blog, they recently announced, A new home for accessibility at Google, where they are collecting all of their accessibility projects into one place. At www.google.com/accessibility you can follow the latest accessibility updates from their blogs, find resources from their help center, participate in a discussion group, or send them your feedback and feature requests. They even provide a feedback form where you can suggest accessibility improvements to their products and services.

Google is making millions of books electronically available, but so far they haven't made the math in them accessible. This could be a huge source of accessible material, but they need to hear from you that you care about accessible math. Now's the time to let them know!