Improve STEM Accessibility With Text to Speech for Math

Ready to introduce your online class to the quadratic formula? Maybe you just show them this:

That might work for some of your students. But what about the ones with vision impairments? What about students who learn better by hearing rather than seeing?

How would you support a student who needs to hear math expressions—not just during your class, but on their own, while working on homework or studying?

“We’ll provide text to speech (TTS),” you might say, and you’d be right. But not every TTS system can accurately read mathematical symbols. Many aren’t set up to understand the code that presents math in digital environments.

ReadSpeaker’s advanced math-reading tools knock down this barrier to access. They provide accurate audio versions of mathematical expressions and text at once. And they do so with some of the most lifelike AI voices available—online, through digital documents, or within your learning management system (LMS).

Here’s what every science, engineering, technology, and math (STEM) teacher needs to know about TTS in STEM education—and how ReadSpeaker places it in your students’ hands.

How ReadSpeaker’s TTS Tools Accurately Read STEM Content

ReadSpeaker has developed a unique system that reads aloud mathematical notations in the W3C standard MathML language or presented as text (ASCII).

What does that mean for STEM educators? Essentially, it means your students can hear math equations in a way that makes sense.

“This is the first on-demand, device independent and streaming web service on the market that speech-enables advanced math in a natural way using the latest online text-to-speech technology.”

—Niclas Bergström, ReadSpeaker Founder and CEO

Most STEM websites represent math expressions using MathML, for instance. Just as the markup language HTML tells browsers how to display text, MathML makes sure equations are displayed correctly—and it takes special technology like ReadSpeaker’s for a TTS engine to recognize MathML.

More specifically, ReadSpeaker’s TTS tools include a collection of rules that read MathML, as well as a custom dictionary to accurately pronounce text-based expressions.

ReadSpeaker’s combination of mark-up compatibility and custom pronunciation support other math technologies, too:

• LaTeX, a STEM presentation tool commonly used for (on- or offline) digital documents
• MathJax, a JavaScript display engine for web browsers
• MathType, an online equation editor
• SSML, a markup language for TTS pronunciation

The ReadSpeaker framework that comes out of the box suits most purposes, but you can also customize your TTS tool for specific needs. For example, you might want math read differently depending on your students’ knowledge level.

ReadSpeaker’s tools read the 100 most common mathematical symbols by default, and others on demand. This includes small and capital Latin letters, the most common small Greek letters, and some operators, including:

• Nabla
• Integrals
• Differentials
• Sums
• Products and coproducts
• Arrows
• And more

In ASCII math representation, ReadSpeaker reads standard functions like trigonometry and logarithms, as well as simple fractions using slashes, parentheses, simple exponents and indices using ^ and other standard characters.

So what does all this mean for your students? It means they can understand mathematical expressions by ear alone—something other TTS tools might not provide.

For example, take this simple equation:

|x – 2| = x + 13

Say the website you’re teaching from displays its equations using MathML. Without ReadSpeaker’s MathML support, a TTS tool would struggle to make sense of this equation.

ReadSpeaker’s tools, however, would simply announce:

“The absolute value of the quantity ‘X minus two’ equals X plus 13.”

Hear ReadSpeaker read this equation natively in a Brightspace LMS environment in the clip below.

For more examples of TTS for online STEM content, please visit the ReadSpeaker Math Demo page.