[pdftex] Read Out Loud function in Acrobat Reader for Dyslexic students

Neil Soiffer Neils at dessci.com
Fri Aug 29 08:41:43 CEST 2008


Here is an alternative you want want to explore if the student is using
Windows and some assistive technology such as a screen reader or magnifier:
use a TeX to XHTML+MathML converter such as TeX4ht (use the convenience
command 'mzlatex file.tex').  If the student has MathPlayer (free download
from dessci.com), screen readers and other assistive technology will read
the text and math when the XHTML+MathML document is viewed in IE.  There is
no need to write speech strings for the math; MathPlayer knows how to speak
the converted TeX.

Neil Soiffer
Senior Scientist
Design Science, Inc.
www.dessci.com
~ Makers of Equation Editor, MathType, MathPlayer and MathFlow ~


On Wed, Aug 27, 2008 at 3:14 PM, Brad Burkman <BBurkman at lsmsa.edu> wrote:

> I teach high-school mathematics and write all of my curriculum materials
> in pdfTeX.  I am exploring the "Read Out Loud" function in Acrobat
> Reader for a dyslexic student who needs to have the questions read to
> her aloud.  We have people to help her, but I'd like to give her as much
> independence as possible.
>
>
>
> Can I, using pdftex or pdflatex, add alternate text to tags in the
> reading order so that, while the student sees the result of $-{3\over 8}
> + {3 \over 4}$, it will read aloud as "negative three over eight plus
> three over four," not "thirty-three hyphen forty-eight"?  An Adobe
> tutorial tells me how to change the tags using Acrobat, but I want to do
> it in TeX.
>
>
>
> Anyone done this or interested in exploring it?
>
>
>
> Brad Burkman
>
> Louisiana School for Math, Science, and the Arts
>
> bburkman at lsmsa.edu
>
>
>
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