WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: fractions and other math bits

for

From: steve.noble@louisville.edu
Date: Jul 29, 2016 1:21PM

MathPlayer has been widely used over the last decade, though I suspect its usage is changing. For a while it was widely used in the mainstream to make up for the fact that Internet Explorer had no native ability to display MathML. That has rather changed lately, since almost all MathML on the web is being served via MathJax, so browsers no longer need to have native support and people do not need to install plugins to simply see the math on the page. Now, MathPlayer's primary function is to augment accessibility to mathematics. Although several AT product depend upon MathPlayer to access math, it rarely comes packaged with the AT...I think Kurzweil 3000 still ships with MathPlayer, but that's probably the exception. Someone using NVDA or WindowEyes, for example, will have to separately download and install MathPlayer (which is free), however, if they want to read math content. It isn't needed, though, if someone is using VoiceOver, ChromeVox, or JAWS 16+.

I wish mathematics content was more widely and uniformly supported by browsers and AT, but for now it is a bit of a "patchwork quilt," so to speak.

Hope that helps...


--Steve Noble
<EMAIL REMOVED>
502-969-3088
http://louisville.academia.edu/SteveNoble


From: WebAIM-Forum [ <EMAIL REMOVED> ] on behalf of Mike Warner [ <EMAIL REMOVED> ]
Sent: Friday, July 29, 2016 2:17 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] fractions and other math bits

Thanks, Steve. I'd seen several sites talk about mathplayer. Is that
commonly installed? Do you think that students who plan to take an online
math course would know to install it? I could add a screen-reader-only
aria alert div with the download info if it's not installed, if the general
consensus is that mathml/mathplayer is the best way to go.

Thanks,
Mike

Mike Warner
Director of IT Services
MindEdge, Inc.

------------------------------
>
> Message: 4
> Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2016 14:30:36 +0000
> From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
> To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
> Subject: Re: [WebAIM] fractions and other math bits
> Message-ID: <C1BF3DDBA47A024DAD5CAFB0A4D8D72001575DBA6F@exmbx01>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
> NVDA handles MathML very well (either HTML+MathML or HTML+MathJax)...just
> make sure you have MathPlayer installed (
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.dessci.com_en_products_mathplayer_&d=AwIGaQ&c=SgMrq23dbjbGX6e0ZsSHgEZX6A4IAf1SO3AJ2bNrHlk&r=4WMck1ZVLo4tV0IVllcBNKXCSGU6lUERtx_4HD4DqmE&m«LoWMr3ZugLOMD3GOJoM626oTLbeEh1N7oexc1oe68&s=ITD8VDnUI3QnXHfm-_zeKQEA4j-q3Oz3jaCA-n2t2Vk&e= ). You'll probably find the
> best experience with FireFox. You can use IE11 if you use Enterprise Mode.
> The latest version of JAWS also now supports math in both IE and Firefox.
> If you want to use Chrome, then you are stuck using the ChromeVox reader,
> and it will only work with HTML+MathJax pages.
>
> A nice resource for figuring out what works with what is Benetech's Math
> Support Finder: https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__msf.mathmlcloud.org_&d=AwIGaQ&c=SgMrq23dbjbGX6e0ZsSHgEZX6A4IAf1SO3AJ2bNrHlk&r=4WMck1ZVLo4tV0IVllcBNKXCSGU6lUERtx_4HD4DqmE&m«LoWMr3ZugLOMD3GOJoM626oTLbeEh1N7oexc1oe68&s=-Fyx-CfULp6iQJZV9D4vehVBoJp_aRcJMubRWp2-kBs&e> It isn't fully populated yet (it is a volunteer effort), but it is growing
> over time.
>
> Best regards,
>
>
> --Steve Noble
> <EMAIL REMOVED>
> 502-969-3088
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__louisville.academia.edu_SteveNoble&d=AwIGaQ&c=SgMrq23dbjbGX6e0ZsSHgEZX6A4IAf1SO3AJ2bNrHlk&r=4WMck1ZVLo4tV0IVllcBNKXCSGU6lUERtx_4HD4DqmE&m«LoWMr3ZugLOMD3GOJoM626oTLbeEh1N7oexc1oe68&s=QzZ-1j3F9wEAWSEnzevOnEim1bHBosDUKGPIXlZs47I&e>