Re: proposed ARIA role for math [DRAFT 1]

In general we agreed with what you say below on the last PF call. However, 
some felt that specifying TeX or whatever should be a best practice and 
not in the spec.
See the thread I started called 'New role="math" in ARIA, how to author 
and how browser would expose it'
In that thread we're discussing some of the remaining issues, and you can 
see the current definition.

- Aaron




"Simon Pieters" <simonp@opera.com> 
Sent by: w3c-wai-pf-request@w3.org
03/05/2008 12:18 PM

To
unagi69@concentric.net, "Gregory J. Rosmaita" <oedipus@hicom.net>, 
w3c-wai-pf@w3.org, public-pfwg-comments@w3.org, "Neil Soiffer" 
<Neils@dessci.com>
cc
neil.soiffer@gmail.com, brewer@w3.org
Subject
Re: proposed ARIA role for math [DRAFT 1]







On Mon, 03 Mar 2008 21:59:16 +0100, Gregory J. Rosmaita 
<unagi69@concentric.net> wrote:

>
> aloha!
>
> when i asked neil soiffer to review my proposal for the math role, he
> kindly responded with the following suggested definition:
>
> <q cite="NeilSoiffer">
> Definition: content that represents a mathematical expression.  This 
> could
> be an accessible format such as MathML, or it can be other textual
> representation that can be converted to an accessible format such as 
TeX.
> This also includes images that represent math. Such images may have
> alternative text or long descriptions that can be converted to an
> accessible format, or the image itself may have embedded comments that 
> can
> be made accessible.  OCR could even be used to interpret the image as
> mathematics. This role enables a plug-in mechanism to provide compliant
> MathML, as well as enabling support for MathML in "mainstream" user 
> agents.
> </q>

It seems unnecessary to say role='math' on MathML content -- surely it is 
implied that MathML content is math.

I would suggest that it be defined exactly what role='math' means so that 
implementors and authors know what to do, as in e.g.:

    Definition: content that represents a mathematical expression 
expressed
    in TeX. [TEX] If the element is an HTML "img" element, then the 
content
    of the alt attribute represents the expression, otherwise the 
element's
    textContent DOM attribute represents the expression. [HTML4] 
[DOM3CORE]

(I don't know if TeX is the best way to represent a mathematical 
expression in plain text, but in any case I think we need to say which it 
is and not let it be an open-ended anything-goes.)

-- 
Simon Pieters
Opera Software