This session is dedicated to the memory of our dear colleague, mentor and Computer Science guru, Professor Arthur I. Karshmer who created this special thematic session at ICCHP 2002 and chaired it at every ICCHP until 2014. Arthur passed away on November 11, 2015. He was our former General Chair (ICCHP 2012) and ICCHP Roland Wagner Award Laureate 2014.
Access to mathematical expressions has always been a particular challenge for people with print disabilities, including blind and partially sighted people, people with cognitive disabilities such as dyslexia, dyscalculia, dyspraxia, and other perception or processing disorders.
The main issue lies in the intrinsic linearity of non-visual modalities, namely auditory in using speech and tactile in using braille, as well as visual characteristics used in writing (e.g. character size, color, contrast), which often make it difficult to understand the overall structure of expressions, while people without print disabilities catch them immediately.
This has a particular negative effect in terms of career possibilities for print disabled people since it excludes them not only from mathematical studies, but also from all fields that require mathematical knowledge, including all scientific areas, as well as areas using statistics. However, in the last decades, a lot of research has been carried out for different target groups to improve:
- Access to mathematical materials in different formats (e.g. adapted visual, audio, braille, captioning) and using assistive technologies,
- Understanding and learning mathematics based on flexible and adaptable multimedia representations,
- Doing mathematics using multi-modal interaction possibilities (e.g. spoken or tangible interfaces, as well as gestures).
This session intends to bring together experts from around the world to present and discuss the state of the art, the actual research and development activities and the future perspectives in access to mathematics, science and statistics.
We are expecting submission of papers relating to scientific work on the following topics (not exclusive):
- Accessible documents including mathematical content,
- Accessibility of tables and figures or drawings in STEM,
- Tools to help understand mathematical semantics,
- Assistants for writing mathematical content (e.g. in pedagogical environment: solving exercises),
- Tools to produce accessible mathematical content, to evaluate accessibility of mathematical content or to adapt badly designed mathematical content into accessible ones,
- Tools to explore graphical mathematical content such as diagrams, charts, graphs and any kind of mathematical figures.
Chairs
Dominique Archambault, Universite Paris8, France
Katsuhito Yamaguchi, Nihon University, Japan
Georgios Kouroupetroglou, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece