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Re: Math and the most accessible way to mark it up

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From: Noble,Stephen L.
Date: Sep 13, 2018 6:30AM

For math speech to work as it should in NVDA, be sure you have MathPlayer installed on the same computer: https://www.dessci.com/en/products/mathplayer/download.htm


VoiceOver "should" work fine...unless something got broken in a recent release...I haven't tried it with math for the last several months.


One thing I will add is that there are often more than one way that an expression might be coded that "looks" OK, but is not necessarily correct. I suggest you follow the examples found in the MathML in DAISY Structure Guidelines: http://www.daisy.org/z3986/structure/SG-DAISY3/part2-math.html


You might also want to consult the advice provided by Hawkes on their MathML Best Practices page: https://www.hawkeslearning.com/Accessibility/guides/mathml_intro.html

While I don't necessarily agree with everything they suggest, it does show how some people approach using MathML in the current reality of today's imperfect web.


Best regards,


--Steve Noble

<EMAIL REMOVED>
502-969-3088


From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > on behalf of Isabel Holdsworth < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Sent: Wednesday, September 12, 2018 5:06 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: [WebAIM] Math and the most accessible way to mark it up

Hi all,

I'm a bit late to the math party, but we're struggling to figure out
the best way to mark up math operations like fractions, indices, Greek
letters, and even the Minus sign.

We have the Wiris MathML editor plugged into one of our text editors,
and it seems to do a really good job of encoding raw characters into
MathML. For the most part it works well with JAWS, but NVDA misses
some vital information, such as the "divided by" between the numerator
and denominator of a fraction, or the "to the power of" between a
number and its index. And VoiceOver isn't speaking anything at all for
some reason, although it's apparently supposed to work with "simple"
math expressions.

Is there a newer and/or more robust way to express math that works
well with more access technologies than MathML seems to?

As always, I'd really appreciate your thoughts on this. Accessibility
is becoming a higher priority in the company I work for, and I want us
to get it right first time wherever possible.

Cheers, Isabel