The Equalize Editor – A Web Application for Braille Math Document Translation

Presented at 9:00 am in Colorado I-J on Friday, November 21, 2025.

Speaker(s)

• Sam Dooley, Lake Pines Braille

Session Details

• Length of Session: 1-hr
• Format: Lecture
• Expertise Level: All Levels
• Type of session: General Conference

Summary

The Equalize Editor allows braille professionals to create, translate, and remediate documents using UEB contracted text and Nemeth braille math. It supports file I/O, clipboard cut/paste, and document export to HTML, PDF, and BRF formats. It allows input from HTML, MathML, AsciiMath, and Markdown formats. Its accessible user interface gives sighted and braille users equal access to online math content.

Abstract

This presentation demonstrates the Equalize Editor generating braille translations of PDF and image documents, using available third-party math OCR tools, remediated using editing features of the Equalize Editor, leading to an efficient braille translation workflow.

There now exist fully paid, low-cost, and even free OCR tools that scan images of document text and math formulas and produce text plus math markup, most commonly TeX and LaTeX, but also Markdown and AsciiMath. While Math OCR technology continues to improve, major limitations still impact its use, including support for handwriting recognition, special formatting, sequences of equations, problem numbering, and equation alignment.

The Equalize Editor allows braille professionals to create, translate, and remediate documents using UEB contracted text and Nemeth braille math. It is freely available for individual and instructional use, written entirely in JavaScript, running in a web browser, and comes with extensive user documentation.

The Equalize Editor creates accessible braille technical documents from print or braille math notation keyboard input and produces print and braille output presentations accessible to either audience, and provides semantic editing tools to remediate common classes of OCR limitations.

The Equalize Editor creates braille-accessible online documents for real-time editing by blind/visually-impaired users. It supports a variety of output translation formats to support braille document conversion, allowing both sighted and blind/visually-impaired users to create and exchange accessible text plus math documents.

The braille-accessible document conversion tools provided by the Equalize Editor allow braille readers to participate in the document conversion and braille generation process, supporting an accessible process that allows print readers, non-specialists, braille readers, and braille transcribers to collaborate in each phase of the document workflow.

Keypoints

1. The Equalize Editor creates accessible text plus math documents.
2. The Equalize Editor imports text plus math documents from HTML, MathML, AsciiMath, and Markdown.
3. The Equalize Editor exports text plus math documents to HTML, PDF, and BRF formats.

Disability Areas

Vision

Topic Areas

Alternate Format, Assistive Technology, Captioning/Transcription, Uncategorized, Web/Media/App Access

Speaker Bio(s)

Sam Dooley

Sam Dooley is the sole proprietor of Lake Pines Braille, LLC, and is the principal software engineer responsible for creating the Equalize Editor, from its original conception in 2001, until its release as a stand alone web application in 2023. He is the inventor of the Braille Generator and Converter software system that forms the core of the Equalize Editor, for which he received a patent in 2018.