1. New Braille reading system and its use for accessing mathematics as a blind person
Jan Engelen, Jan Willekens, Eric Pauwels, Tiene Nobels, Kay Hameyer (*) and Frank Allemeersch (**)
(*) Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Dept. Elektrotechniek-ESAT
(**) Sensotec Cy, Bruges-Belgium
Project action lines:
A. Development of a novel, compact Braille reading system patent pending, no details available yet
B. Access to mathematical formula for Braille users

2. B. Access to mathematical formula for Braille users
Background: Two competing formats for math's representation:
Tex (or Latex): old, well defined, layout oriented
MathML: recent, layout AND semantically oriented, but very few semantic documents
Many different Braille representation systems for Mathematics do exist: Nemeth code, Marburg code, Woluwe code etc.
In this project:
Latex & Woluwe Code
Conversion based on (user adaptable) regular expressions

3. Examples

4. User testing of mathematical representations

5. Acknowledgements
The work presented here has been funded by the Flemish Government through its STWW Programme (Strategic Technologies for Welfare and Well-being) in the framework of project:
"A tactile mouse for the simulation of a refreshable 2D tactile Display - IWT980387”
The developments were made by:
K.U.Leuven- Dept Elektrotechniek ESAT-ELEN
K.U.Leuven- Dept Elektrotechniek ESAT-PSI-TEO
Sensotec Company
User testing took place with the aid of: Instituut Spermalie (Brugge), Koninklijk Instituut (Woluwe), Braillekrant, Infovisie and several independent consultants.