WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Screenreaders and MathML

for

From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: Nov 1, 2011 9:06PM

Hi Karen

I guess this is getting a little bit off topic, but I need to make
your life that little bitmore difficult *grin*.
Even if you use MathJax users are tied to Internet Explorer.
MathPlayer, which is the software that generates the math for the
users (I am assuming you are using MathPlayer, if not there is some
magic software out there I am not aware of), will not work with other
browsers. This is due to lack of development work and differences in
how these browsers handle MathML. The development staff for MathPlayer
are aware of this, and would like to get it working with Firefox,
however the staff priority now is to make MathPlayer work with
Microsoft Word directly, since Design Science, the makers of MathType
and MathPlayer, have gotten a grant to do that work (you can see some
more about this on their accessibility blog at www.dessci.com).
To make math accessible from Word, at lesat using MathML, you need to
use MathType.
Go to http://www.access2science.com (neutral website, at lesat not run
by Design Science), for articles on this, both what you need to keep
in mind and what Microsoft Word with MathType can do in terms of
accessibility (export as MathPage, convert to LaTeX on the fly, or
turn into Daisy, with the MathDaisy plug in and the save as daisy lug
in).
www.dessci.com's MathPlayer section also has info on this.
There is no accessibility solution for MathML in PDFs at this point in
time. Neil Soiffer, the main developer of MathPlayer, has done some
experimentation with PDF accessibility, but that has not advanced
beyond just initial testing with a very limited number of PDFs. It is
doable, but the problem with all the math accessibility work has been
that users are not interested enough, screen reader makers, who need
to make some development changes to accommodate MathPlayer, do not get
user request for math accessibility so it ends up at the bottom of the
long requirement lists, and there has just been general apathy, and
users avoid math,or invent their own workarounds.
There is a Blindmath mailing list you can subscribe to and participate
in discussions (I believe the info is on the www.access2science.com
page).
We need more people to be active, contriute ideas and request
necessary features, both from MathPlayer itself (version 3 , release
candidate 1 is about to be released any day now, and to help pressure
screen reader makers to adjust).
I am not saying MathPlayer is the ultimate and perfect software, it is
free but it is proprietary, but it is the best thing we have for math
accessibility right now, so do not take this as a plug for MathPlayer
or software advertizement. Neil has done good work to advance math
accessibility, and with HTML5 and epub3 standards on the horizon, I am
as optimistic as I've ever been (which is not terribly, but
reasonably), that math accessibility might take big steps forward in
the months and years to come.
Thanks
-Birkir



On 11/2/11, Karen Sorensen < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> Thanks to Vincent, Birkir and E.A.,
> You may of course link to these videos. Great to know it is the screen
> reader users choice whether they hear the table formatting or not. There
> are other videos on my YouTube channel of unsuccessful attempts to read
> math documents if you are interested. I can also provide a summary of our
> trials. These are the only two successful attempts though. I'd like to try
> using MathJAX with these MathML pages, so students could use other browsers
> besides IE (or at least that's what MathJAX claims).
> What do folks use to make math documents like Word docs or PDFs accessible?
> Math Daisy is what we are thinking is best. Anyone have an opinion on this.
> Thank you!
> Best,
> Karen
> Karen M. Sorensen
> Instructional Technology Specialist
> Accessibility Advocate for Online Courses
> Portland Community College
> 971-722-4720
>
>>
>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>> From: Karen Sorensen < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
>> To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
>> Date: Mon, 31 Oct 2011 12:01:42 -0700
>> Subject: [WebAIM] Screenreaders and MathML
>> Hi -
>> We are doing some screen reader tests on Math ML. See:
>>
>> - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQL7Woe3hT4
>> - produced using tex4ht (.tex to .xht)
>> - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIxEDl8gvdU
>> - produced using MSWord to .xht
>>
>> Does anyone know how to have the screen reader ignore the table that the
>> equation is formatted with? CSS won't really work because I can't ask the
>> Math faculty to all learn CSS. Any other ideas?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Karen
>>
>> --
>> Karen M. Sorensen
>> Instructional Technology Specialist
>> Accessibility Advocate for Online Courses
>> Portland Community College
>> 971-722-4720
>>
>>
>>
>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>> From: Vincent Young < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
>> To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
>> Date: Mon, 31 Oct 2011 12:04:47 -0700
>> Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Screenreaders and MathML
>> You could try adding role="presentation" to the table.
>>
>> On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 12:01 PM, Karen Sorensen < <EMAIL REMOVED>
>> >wrote:
>>
>> > Hi -
>> > We are doing some screen reader tests on Math ML. See:
>> >
>> > - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQL7Woe3hT4
>> > - produced using tex4ht (.tex to .xht)
>> > - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIxEDl8gvdU
>> > - produced using MSWord to .xht
>> >
>> > Does anyone know how to have the screen reader ignore the table that the
>> > equation is formatted with? CSS won't really work because I can't ask
>> > the
>> > Math faculty to all learn CSS. Any other ideas?
>> >
>> > Thanks,
>> > Karen
>> >
>> > --
>> > Karen M. Sorensen
>> > Instructional Technology Specialist
>> > Accessibility Advocate for Online Courses
>> > Portland Community College
>> > 971-722-4720
>> >