How can digital content help students with learning disabilities that affect their ability to process math?

Date Updated: 
05/24/22

Some learning disabilities make it difficult for students to acquire math skills. Students may not be able to fully understand mathematics content in standard print form because of the additional mental processing required to interpret math expressions. They may react to math problems on the page as signals to do something, rather than as meaningful sentences that need to be read for understanding. In particular, they may face difficulties with self-verbalizing math equations. Using synthetic speech to verbalize digital mathematics expressions may aid students with these challenges.

Digital math content created with can be an effective format for this application. MathML is a math format that supports access techniques commonly used by students with learning disabilities, such as synthetic speech and synchronized highlighting. A number of commonly used assistive technologies designed for use by students with learning disabilities, like and , support MathML content.

For further information on educational issues relating to math and students with learning disabilities see the article by Kate Garnet.

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