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Re: Screen readers, math symbols, and Word

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From: Andrew Kirkpatrick
Date: Nov 17, 2010 11:33AM

I'll answer my own question. There are lots of tables of symbols (e.g. http://www.w3.org/TR/MathML2/isoamsr.html). I guess my question is whether there is a prioritized listing - I assume "almost equal to" being more important than "geometrically equal to" (I'm not doing much geometry), but I imagine that most every one is important to some discipline. It's hard to imagine that all of these and other symbols will be supported widely anytime soon. There must be a better way than each assistive technology or TTS voice needing to recognize these...

Thanks,
AWK

Andrew Kirkpatrick
Group Product Manager, Accessibility
Adobe Systems

<EMAIL REMOVED>
http://twitter.com/awkawk
http://blogs.adobe.com/accessibility


-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED> [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Stephen L Noble
Sent: Wednesday, November 17, 2010 12:50 PM
To: <EMAIL REMOVED>
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Screen readers, math symbols, and Word

The preferred solution is to use web documents using MathML (i.e.,
XHTML+MathML). At this juncture, native accessibility to mathematical
content within a Word document has not been solved.

For a broader discussion, see NCAM's Accessible Digital Media
Guidelines:
http://ncam.wgbh.org/invent_build/web_multimedia/accessible-digital-media-guide/guideline-g-math
Technique G2.1 / Use MathML to provide access to scientific and
mathematical expressions
"MathML is the best choice for a markup language for expressing math.
The advantage of MathML is it provides mathematical information in an
open, standard format that can be exploited by a wide range of assistive
technologies."

Best regards,
--Steve Noble

------------------------------------
-- Steve Noble
Chair, National Technology Task Force
Learning Disabilities Association of America
<EMAIL REMOVED>
502-969-3088

--------------
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>>> Cliff Tyllick < <EMAIL REMOVED> > 11/17/2010 11:55 AM >>>
One of our authors who has tested Word documents in JAWS 9 has
doscovered that the "greater than or equal to" symbol (Unicode character
2265) is announced as "greater than."

In some cases this might be a minor annoyance, but the difference is
important in documents that tell people how to comply with environmental
regulations. Is there a good solution to this problem?

If not, we're thinking of just replacing the character with an inline
graphic of the same size with appropriate alt text. Thoughts?

And is this just a JAWS thing, or do other screen readers do the same?

Cliff


Cliff Tyllick
Usability assessment coordinator
Agency Communications Division
Texas Commission on Environmental Quality
512-239-4516
<EMAIL REMOVED>