[Webmath] Press Release: DSI Receives Additional Funding for Math Accessibility

[Bob Mathews]

Hi,

I thought you would be interested to know that Design Science is 
making progress on mathematics accessibility. We just received a 
phase 2 grant to develop technology to make mathematics 
accessible in MS Word and Adobe PDF, with work continuing for 
the Web.

You can read the press release on our web site, or see the full 
text below.
http://www.dessci.com/en/company/press/releases/

Bruce Virga
VP, Sales

- our address has changed -
Design Science, Inc.
140 Pine Avenue, 4th Floor
Long Beach, California  90802
USA
Tel:  (562) 432-2920
Fax:  (562) 432-2857
http://www.dessci.com
~ Makers of MathType, MathFlow, MathPlayer, WebEQ, Equation 
Editor, TexAide ~


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Design Science Receives Additional Funding to Make Mathematics 
Accessible

Research to Target Microsoft Word and Adobe PDF

LONG BEACH, Calif. - August 10, 2005 - Design Science, Inc. 
announced today it has received a National Science Foundation 
(NSF) grant (No. 0522308) to continue research in making 
mathematical content accessible to people with vision 
disabilities. The grant leverages efforts of the company's 
pioneering work in making mathematics in web pages accessible, 
by extending mathematics accessibility to Microsoft Word and 
Adobe PDF documents. The company also intends to add support for 
Braille and improve its speech generation algorithms.

"The prevalence of Word and PDF documents in science and 
education makes bringing math accessibility to these formats the 
next logical step. Our aim is to develop a robust, market-ready 
system." said Dr. Neil Soiffer, Senior Scientist at Design 
Science and the grant's Principal Investigator.

The urgent need for readily accessible mathematics was 
highlighted in the recent U.S. Department of Education 
announcement, "Raising Achievement: A New Path for No Child Left 
Behind", that now focuses institutions on providing a more 
sensible and informed approach to the testing of students with 
persistent academic disabilities. Furthermore, while assistive 
technologies exist today that make textual content accessible to 
those with visual disabilities,  extending this same technology 
for mathematics for a variety of mainstream documents will 
directly address the needs of federal and international agencies 
to comply with content accessibility charters.

This grant reinforces Design Science's position as the leading 
vendor of MathML-based solutions. Prior NSF-funded research into 
mathematics accessibility has already been incorporated into 
Design Science's MathPlayer, a tool enabling Microsoft Internet 
Explorer users to display and speak mathematical notations in 
web pages. MathPlayer's accessibility features, based on MathML 
technology, enable individuals with visual disabilities to hear 
mathematical expressions read aloud. Users can navigate through 
an expression using arrow keys to listen to parts of an equation 
several times in order to build up a complete mental picture. 
Future versions will simultaneously highlight the  terms being 
read aloud to help individuals with low vision and learning 
disabilities such as dyslexia. MathPlayer is currently the only 
mathematics accessibility solution that seamlessly integrates 
with leading screen reader software, such as JAWS, Window-Eyes, 
HAL, Read & Write, and BrowseAloud.

About MathML
MathML is an XML-based language for representing mathematics 
that was published as a Recommendation by the World Wide Web 
Consortium (W3C) in 1998. Since MathML captures the meaning and 
structure of mathematics, it enables a wide range of 
applications. In addition to making it possible to have math 
spoken to visually disabled readers, it also enables searching 
for mathematical expressions within content and interoperability 
with the growing number of computational applications that 
understand MathML.

About Design Science, Inc.
Founded in 1986 and headquartered in Long Beach, California, 
Design Science develops software used by educators, scientists 
and publishing professionals, including MathType, Equation 
Editor in Microsoft Office, WebEQ, MathFlow, MathPlayer and 
TeXaide, to communicate on the web and in print. For more 
information please visit http://www.dessci.com.

###

Contact:

Zsolt Silberer
Vice President, Marketing
<mailto:zsolts at dessci.com>zsolts at dessci.com
800-827-0685
562-432-2920

Design Science, Inc.
140 Pine Avenue, 4th Floor
Long Beach, CA 90802, USA