Re: Call for Review: HTML5 Image Description Extension (longdesc) Last Call

Hi Craig,

> I'm not sure to which contributions you are referring. Was this an
client-side add-on project like
>MathJax or was it a contribution to WebKit? Perhaps these contributions
didn't make it through the code review process? I see a couple of
Linux-only bugs (71738 and 71742). Perhaps you
> heard someone complaining about Gtk or Orca support?

> A look through the change logs indicates Apple engineers contributed all
the
> MathML accessibility work to WebKit, but I know Google did some work in
> Chromium and ChromeVox to take advantage of these updates, as did the
VoiceOver engineering team.

Since I was one of the people bringing this up at that W3C ebook workshop,
let me add some background.

This is about WebKit. Its MathML implementation (visual rendering, not
accessibility) has been done by volunteers, notably Dave Barton re-wrote
and extended it in 2012. Not all of his code has been integrated into
Safari 6 since its WebKit cut-off was too early.

There are a couple of WebKit patches that are not being landed, especially
a larger security patch by Martin Robinson. MathJax's Fred Wang has
submitted a few patches recently as well.

But even with all current patches, the WebKit MathML implementation is far
from complete (and far behind Firefox). It's good enough for enthusiasts
but not ready for professional production.

Blink/Chrome has removed the MathML code completely. ChromeVox only reads
MathML, but cannot visually render it (but it can handle MathJax-rendering
just as well).

Peter Krautzberger.

-- 

Dr. Peter Krautzberger
MathJax Manager
mathjax.org <http://www.mathjax.org/> | fb.com/mathjax |
@mathjax<http://twitter.com/mathjax>