Maths that feels good - creating learning resources for blind students

An international team of researchers has developed a method for easily creating textbooks in Braille, with an initial focus on maths textbooks. Mathematics and science Braille textbooks are expensive and time-consuming to produce, but thanks to innovations developed at the University of Birmingham and institutions in the US, this could soon change. A team that includes experts from Towson University , in Maryland, the University of Puget Sound , in Washington, and the National Federation of the Blind , as well as from the University of Birmingham, has developed an online system that will overcome some of the main challenges to producing a Braille version of a textbook. These include representing the structure and the layout of the book - since in Braille all letters are the same size and shape - and representing maths formulas, graphs and diagrams. Mathematical formulas are typically represented using the Nemeth Braille Code, initially developed in the 1950s. The Nemeth Braille in this project is produced by an open source system called Speech Rule Engine, which operates within MathJax, a software package designed to display maths formulas on webpages. Dr Volker Sorge , of the School of Computer Science at the University of Birmingham, is a member of the MathJax consortium working on the project.