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Re: Access and Online Math Classes

for

From: Reidy Brown
Date: Aug 14, 2001 3:18PM

John,
You can find information on this in the National Center for Accessible
Media's online guide "Making Educational Software Accessible: Design
Guidelines Including Math and Science Solutions," which is at
http://ncam.wgbh.org/cdrom/guideline/.
The University of Toronto's SNOW group is also doing some interesting work
in this area, and that information can be found at
http://nide.snow.utoronto.ca/MathML/ (Taras Kowaliw, at
<EMAIL REMOVED> , is the contact person for that project).
Unfortunately, though, this is still a challenging problem. Although there
are several authoring tools that allow users to create MathML markup quickly
and easily (some of which also generate images of the equations as well--
take a look at WebEQ at http://www.dessci.com/webmath/webeq/features.stm), I
don't believe that screen readers and browsers can correctly interpret the
results-- yet.
However, if you create content that contains a structured representation of
the math (e.g., MathML), you are in a good position when user agents (screen
readers and browsers) support MathML-- your content will then "become"
accessible with no further effort on your part.
Good luck,
Reidy
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Reidy Brown
Accessibility Coordinator/
Sr. Software Engineer
Blackboard, Inc.
1899 L. St., NW, 5th Floor
Washington, DC 20036
(202) 463-4860 x236
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