That's interesting, thanks for the references. I wonder if this is applicable to screen readers as well as Braille?
Re:MathML is a failed web standard
by laughinghan on Monday April 11, 2016 @02:50PM
(#11474111)
Oh, I was talking about screen readers the whole time, except for an aside that the speech rules system I was discussing was created by Nemeth who is known for his Braille system. Other than that though, I wasn't talking about Braille at all.
Specifically, just like a sighted person has to determine from context whether "a(b)" is function application or variable multiplication, a blind person can be asked to determine from context whether "a left-parenthesis b right-parenthesis" is function application or variable multiplication.
No AI or CV is required for such a reading algorithm. It's unfortunate that this reading algorithm doesn't quite match what two mathematicians would say if they were conversing with each other, but there's at least one good reason to believe this is still a useful reading algorithm: it's exactly the system used by blind mathematician Abraham Nemeth with his readers, called "mathspeak":
http://www.nfbcal.org/s_e/list/0033.html(Nemeth notably created the Nemeth Braille Code for Mathematics, which is part of Unified English Braille and is probably the most widely used Braille code for math. MathSpeak hasn't enjoyed the same level of adoption, but only because there's no standard, MathPlayer, VoiceOver etc all have their own ad hoc rules for how to read math.)
(Strictly speaking the example I gave was a verbose variant of the system described in the email: http://www.gh-mathspeak.com/examples/NemethBook/?rule=18 ) [2]: