According to a research report commissioned by Microsoft in 2003 approximately one in four (25%) computer users has a visual difficulty or impairment, more precisely 17% (21.9 million) of computer users have a mild visual difficulty or impairment, and 9% (11.1 million) of computer users have a severe visual difficulty or impairment. Computer users are as likely as working-age adults to have mild difficulties or impairments, but they are less likely to have severe difficulties or impairments. These statistics are meaningful also when looking at typical users of online, elearning education since a large number is represented by working adults committed to life-long-learning returning to schools.

Not only is mathematics one of the corner stones of the information and communication society, but it is also part of every curriculum all over the world, at all levels of instruction and is basically the same everywhere. What is not yet the same is the accessibility of high quality mathematics resources to every individual, despite of location, cultural differences or learning ability. In terms of disabilities, ICT can provide extra assistance in overcoming "print disabilities", namely low vision, blindness, and dyslexia. To have equal opportunity in accessing math education delivered in electronic form, individuals with disabilities need to be able to profit from the electronic format in the same way as people without disabilities do.

Using semantic markup formats, like OpenMath and MathML, to represent the mathematical fragments in the digital resources, allows to automatically generate, without extra efforts, accessible approaches to the mathematics content, such as as onscreen display with highlighting that moves in sync with synthetic speech, thereby adapting to the learning requirements of students needing multi-modal visual and aural presentations. By providing technology and tools, it is possible to overcome the impediment that still todays sees few visually impaired students continuing their education in scientific and engineering studies because the mathematics training received in high school leaves them behind. However, there is no evidence of a physiological barrier linking "print disability" with poor performance in mathematics. The real issue is that ICT has not yet been employed and exploited enough to support doing mathematics.

One of the advantages of producing digital mathematical content using semantic markup is the "free" possibility to comply with accessibility guidelines that have been put forward for education and also for the web. Producing enhanced presentations for visually impaired readers can be automated by software and tools described in this section.

MathML has been used to extend the Digital Talking Book format promoted by the DAISY Consortium in their recently published specification extension. This international consortium aims to develop, integrate and promote international standards, technologies and implementation strategies to enable global access by people with print disabilities to information provided by mainstream publishers, governments, and libraries. Their focus is on accessible books and is complementary to the work proposed here which addresses interactive software and tools used to better mathematics instruction. The DTB format is and XML-based format that can be utilized to produce multimodal lecture notes.

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