I have found that on Allegro common lisp, running on windows, I can access
the "text to speech" (TTS) facilities. That is, I can have my computer say,
out loud (or into headphones), moderately easily, whatever I ask it
to say.
123* x^2 could be spelled out as "123 eks squared" and read as
one hundred twenty three eks squared ..
Reading math is not especially new; T V Raman wrote a thesis
on AsTeR, and dessci.com's mathplay reads mathml on a browser page.
But maybe we can do nicer things from a system perspective than
from MathML.
e.g. "I'm sorry Dave, but I'm afraid it would take me a very long time
to speak that result." or treatment of labels, intermediate expressions,
system prompts, etc.
Note that the speech stream can indicate changes in pitch, speed, or
choice of voice. e.g. raising the pitch for exponents, dropping
for subscripts.
(I believe that other lisps with COM interfaces can do the same
thing on Windows; I don't know about linux etc. )
It is
fairly obvious that visually impaired students could be assisted
by elaborating on TTS in math as well as other domains.
What would YOU like to do with Text-to-Speech?
RJF