Why aren't you asking for hardcopy braille or for BRF files if that's what you need? Accessible documents are not an unreasonable request, and if your school is refusing to help you, you need to apply some legal pressure.

Have you heard of Learning Ally? They have a college success program that you can sign up for and gain a mentor with low vision that has already finished college. If you are having trouble navigating disability resources on your own they are great at coaching you through it and providing alternatives. I am a current college student with low vision and have found my mentor to be incredibly helpful. Here is a link: https://learningally.org/College-Success/Join

What is the format the files are in? Is it PDF or something else?

Are you in college here in the US? Your school should have disability services for you. I know this is hard especially with covid but please don't give up.

Tuns of people here have already recommended a bunch of good stuff. However one thing you may be able to try also is asciimath, which NVDA should read in word. Bit of a learning curv to it, though. Plus if you prefer braille for math it may not translate well to that format, but its an option for speech anyway. Just google asciimath to have the symbols listing come up, its all over the web as far as how to do it correctly. Its essentially another way of writing out equations, different symbols for divide, multiply etc.

I actually work for a university and help with accessibility and digital accessibility for the blind. If you would ever like to private message me and talk, maybe we could find a way that we could speak and I could help you a little bit more directly. I would be happy to try!

This sucks. Do you know what the formulas were originally written in? Often times the source is LaTeX and as so I use the source code to display the equations in an accessible way for blind students. I would encourage you to ask your professor and the publisher of the used textbook(s) for that. I can‘t promise it will work, but if OCR and stuff don‘t work...
Talking more long-term you should get informed about your rights, because I‘m rather sure this lack of assistance is not legal.

I‘m a legally blind uni student myself and also work in the intersection of course development and e-accessibility, so I can kinda double-confirm how much of a pain educating lecturers can be. Feel free to contact me if I can further help you.

What degree are you pursuing? Is it even practical? I mean, I'm a Bio grad that's jobless

All I can say is stick with it. Ask or demand what you need.

The small college I went to told me that if I could show them I bought a text book (even the cheapest most damaged copy I could find) the school could get an electronic version from the publisher.
Keep on it, the worst thing is to look back and have regrets. I went back to college at 40.
My only “failure” was scuba diving.

Good luck and keep fighting

I'm sorry you're having such a frustrating experience. College is a big transition for anyone, even without the obstacles you're facing. I hope you find a way to stick it out and enjoy the good parts of the college experience. I'm not visually impaired, and my visually impaired friend is past school age, so I don't have any proven answers but I do have some ideas.


I can't view your sample document, but it sounds like you're dealing with an Algebra or Calculus class. Since you have access to electronic versions of the document it may be possible to convert them to BRF format. There are a number of options, such as https://onlineconvertfree.com/convert/brf/. I haven't used them, so i don't know which ones are good or how well they'd handle fractions and graphs.


Optical character recognition (OCR) software may be useful to convert the documents that contain images of equations into documents with text equations.


You may want to ask your question in /r/AskEngineers. Accessibility questions have come up there a number of times, and Engineers like solving problems.


And finally, there is at least one college level Calculus course that is designed for blind students. It may point to resources your professors could use in your classes, or it may be something you could take as Independent Study to meet your math requirements.


Here is the link to and a brief excerpt from "A Graphical Calculus Course for Blind Students."


https://www.questia.com/library/journal/1G1-205268426/a-graphical-calculus-course-for-blind-students


For blind students seeking education and a career in science, engineering and mathematics, the calculus has presented a formidable barrier. This is not simply due to the intrinsic difficulty of the subject, which is obstacle enough for most students. The additional hurdle for blind students is the substantial graphical component of the typical calculus course. There are two major aspects of that graphical component: primarily, there is the representation of geometrical objects, especially the graphs of functions; then, there is the presentation of mathematical formulas as a graphic display.


Under a grant from the National Science Foundation, the Computer Science Department (CSD) of the College of Staten Island and the Computer Center for the Visually Impaired (CCVI) of Baruch College are developing text materials and providing an environment to offer blind and visually impaired students technologically assisted access to the graphical content of the calculus. The goal of the project is to equal or exceed the quality of courses for students with unimpaired vision. We are installing facilities for reading mathematical text and graphics directly without the help of sighted readers. It is only quite recently that any such technology has become practical and affordable for institutions. We can expect that it will become so for individuals before long.


We wish to bring such a course into being for the students who need it right now. For that reason, we are trying to base our system, insofar as possible, on "off-the-shelf" technology and courseware, rather than try to invent much of it.