Making study material more inclusive for people with blindness: Learning from CFA Institute

In August 2018, I got the news that I have passed Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) Level III exam. CFA is a very rigorous program consisting of 3 very intense exams. The content for these exams is heavily quantitative. It could be even more tough for a person with blindness as a blind person has to get the course material converted in a suitable format. But CFA institute made the course material accessible by making material available online and equations in math ML format. Yes, you guessed it right, I am a person with blindness myself.

To understand what I just said, it is important to know some background. Technology has made a huge difference for people with blindness. There is a special software that reads out information in computer or mobile devices. This software is known as screen reader. You can see these screen readers in mobile phones as Talkback in Android or Voiceover in iPhone. This technology is somewhat similar to a navigation system that informs the upcoming route. To be precise, a screen reader depends on two technologies. For speech, it uses what is known as speech synthesizer, and for Braille output, it uses Braille display.

Before screen readers, blind persons had to depend on one to one help such as a family member or  friend who would either read the books or record them. Some organizations working for people with blindness would record commonly used material. But such material would be only available for subjects that are studied widely, that too with great difficulty. Some organizations would also convert books in Braille, but since this is a laborious process, only limited books have been available and they are bulky.

Due to modern technology, blind persons can read electronic content, but not any content. A content has to be made available in a proper format. This format is known as e-Pub which is becoming more and more popular among publishers. But just making books available in e-pub may not solve the problem. For example, Some publishers might put images in the e-pub, but images are not readable through screen readers. In order to make it accessible, the material needs to be in plain text or HTML. For technical subjects that have equations such as mathematics and other math based subjects (Science, Technology, Engineering, or finance), a standard known as math ML should be used to specify equations. Math ML can be embedded in e-pub books.

The traditional methods such as recording or Braille books were not scalable, so very few people could benefit from them. The few lucky once were those who had support of a family or an organization. But if we make mainstream course material more accessible just as CFA institute did, we would be able to make many people with blindness independent. This does not mean that such material would only be available for someone with a screen reader only. The same accessible content would be readable through Braille using a special device known as Braille display which converts print to Braille instantly without requiring huge infrastructure. People can also use Braille printer to create Braille books from e-pub books.

With earlier methods, I often struggled to get material. Whereas with CFA material I didn’t need any help as content was properly formatted in text, and  All the equations were also formatted in math ML. The only help I needed was for understanding diagrams. It was easy to find a solution Even for this, I could print them and request anyone without any financial knowledge to trace the diagram with simple board and pen. This would raise the diagram in reverse and I could understand them. For this, I needed someone’s help only for a percent or 2 of the time.

Needless to say, CFA institute has shown a way forward for the empowerment of persons with disabilities through accessible course material. I wish other institutes could learn from CFA institute and become more inclusive.