The Research On Automatic Conversion For Chinese Mathematical Braille

In recent years, information accessibility research has attracted increasing attention. The development of information accessibility technology assists the blind in accessing the electronic literature and online information through the Internet. The method of accessing mathematics information is a significant part of the information accessibility research. As a considerable basis for science, mathematical symbols and mathematical formulae widely exist in various areas of literatures. Mathematics is indispensable in scientific research and plays an important role in daily life. However, the blind face accessibility difficulties in learning mathematics due to the two-dimensional structure in formulae. The difficulties become more serious in E-learning. Therefore, it is necessary for the blind to carry out the research on mathematics information accessibility method.Some projects have researched the problem of mathematics accessibility and have made some breakthrough. At present, an unsolved problem is the conversion between mathematical formulae used by the sighted and the Chinese mathematical Braille used by the blind.This thesis mainly research automatic conversion from MathML format of the mathematical formulae to Chinese mathematical Braille. The thesis proposes the conversion scheme. The conversion model takes MathML as the intermediate format. The automatic conversion algorithm is based on XSL templates. Then the thesis developed an automatic conversion software for converting MathML Content to Chinese mathematical Braille ASCII (referred to below as Math2Dot). Math2Dot convertible mathematical formula covers the mathematical formula range from junior high school to senior high school and parts mathematical formula in university, including basic arithmetic operations, absolute value and inequality, fraction, power, radical, trigonometry, logarithm, logic operations, limitation, summation etc. Math2Dot developed by XSL technology, therefore, Math2Dot have better flexibility, extensibility and portability, it is easy to transplant, modify and upgrade. Finally, the thesis performed an experiment to test Math2Dot. The results illustrate that Math2Dot has high accuracy and wide range of conversion. Therefore, Math2Dot is able to be applied to the special education in our country for primary school, junior nigh school and senior high school.