

Ask HN: Friend is blind and programming genius, wants to learn math - kr4

I have a (visually challenged) friend who has an uncanny talent for programming but he&#x27;s completely self-taught. He can build any desktop&#x2F;web app (he&#x27;s a full stack dev), but he wants to go deeper – into AI&#x2F;ML and stuff like that.<p>However, due to lack of any significant math education during childhood, he’s lacking foundation into things like linear algebra&#x2F;calculus&#x2F;statistics ETC which are basic necessities for AI&#x2F;ML.<p>On my recommendation, he has recently started following Khan videos and is picking up things (so far) fast. But obviously that is not the best format for a person challenged with sight. As per my discussions with him, it seems the ideal way to learn for him is by eBooks. But he doesn’t know which one to pick.<p>So what I want to do to help him with the help of HN: find eBook(s) that can build a kind of math curriculum to cover topics like linear algebra, calculus, the same way a good programming book covers topics starting from introduction to the programming language up to using the standard library.
Here’s the catch: the book must be accessible which means it doesn’t excessively use diagrams to explain concepts and if it uses any graphical symbols, it should provide explanations of those somewhere – say in the appendix.<p>Edit: Inspired by this recent post – https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=6854663
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buugs
It may be better to see if you can find someone who is blind and studied
mathematics to some degree to see how to proceed.

I know most universities have an accessibility department which might make it
easier to take a math class than trying to read a book with obscure concepts.

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gspyrou
Check out this paper 'Audio Rendering of Mathematical Formulae Using MathML
and AudioMath' from
[http://download.springer.com/static/pdf/120/bok%253A978-3-54...](http://download.springer.com/static/pdf/120/bok%253A978-3-540-30111-0.pdf?auth66=1387523411_cee90ce76795a504ae65d679346979de&ext=.pdf)

