Re: Some feedback from Chemistry CG

I reached out to a chemistry professor, who told me that
this chemical reaction

CH_4 + 2 O_2 \to CO_2 + 2 H_2O

would typically be pronounced

see aitch four plus two oh two reacts to form see oh two
plus two aitch two oh .

He also noted that some element names, like "hydrogen"
and "oxygen" are the name of the element, and the name of
one atom of that element, and also the name of the diatomic
molecule.

Regards,

David



On Wed, 30 Sep 2020, Deyan Ginev wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I looked up into the "chemical equations" some more, although
> definitely from an amateur angle (both not a native speaker, and not a
> chemistry expert). The highest viewed youtube video that comes up for
> "chemical equations" has 3 million views and contains 15 minutes of
> examples with balancing said equations. Sadly the video is for sighted
> learners and the teacher expects that the viewers have full visual
> access to the writing he is presenting over:
>
> https://youtu.be/eNsVaUCzvLA
>
> Something that struck me after watching the mini lesson is that indeed
> the Chemistry CG had a point with their comment. The teacher would
> talk about the chemical "names" of the elements in the course of
> discussion and explanation, "outside" of the equation, but every time
> the focus returns into the main equation (e.g. to add new coefficients
> and read subexpressions) he would switch to reading out the
> presentation verbatim, as if reading symbolic variables. You can
> fast-forward to minute 10 for complex examples.
>
> I then found the previous video in the series that introduces the
> "chemical equations" as contrasted to "word equations", which seems to
> be extra confirmation that the symbolic variable reading is
> intentional:
>
> https://youtu.be/yA3TZJ2em6g
>
> If these videos are anywhere near common practice, they seem to
> confirm that speech inside the equation is completely
> symbolic/presentational. So as long as there are well-scoped "mi"
> elements the equations are already close to fully accessible. And
> hence can remain unannotated for speech. You'd of course still need
> the annotations for e.g. search indexing, highlighting, legends and
> other "advanced" applications, but speech would be fine with just the
> presentation in this subdomain. Maybe it is then best to keep these
> constructs in level 3 for now.
>
> Greetings,
> Deyan
>
> On Mon, Sep 14, 2020 at 6:38 PM <kerscher@montana.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>>
>>
>> Two points:
>>
>>
>>
>> It was a sub-group that met and the whole CG did not see this.
>> I am not sure that what they intended was clearly communicated, i.e. I think we need to confirm with them their request and implications.
>>
>> Best
>>
>> George
>>
>>
>>
>> From: Neil Soiffer <soiffer@alum.mit.edu>
>> Sent: Monday, September 14, 2020 4:16 PM
>> To: David Farmer <farmer@aimath.org>
>> Cc: public-mathml4@w3.org
>> Subject: Re: Some feedback from Chemistry CG
>>
>>
>>
>> I agree that they seemed to have missed the main point and focused on my second question that involved options/flexibility.
>>
>>
>>
>>     Neil
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Sep 14, 2020 at 2:44 PM David Farmer <farmer@aimath.org> wrote:
>>
>>
>> Is it possible that the Chemistry people completely missed the point
>> that we are asking about encoding the meaning of what appears in
>> the MathML?
>>
>> I can see their comments are making sense in the context of advising
>> Neil how assistive technology might pronounce "H_2 O".  I do not
>> see a reasonable argument against marking up the meaning of the
>> symbols in a chemical formula.  And I can see a lot of reasons for wanting
>> to do so.
>>
>> I can also imagine a hierarchy of ways of pronouncing chemical formulas,
>> just like there is for reading mathematics.  At one extreme is
>> what was written in the shared email:  “cap C cap H sub 4” for methane.
>> Next might be "C H 4".  After that might be "methane".  And just like
>> in math, the user gets to choose, if the source has been properly
>> constructed.
>>
>> You are reduced to guessing, the exact thing we are trying to avoid,
>> if the meaning is not encoded.
>>
>> On Mon, 14 Sep 2020, Neil Soiffer wrote:
>>
>>> Since subscripts and superscripts should not be read in a default way, at least msub/msup need to be tagged in
>>> some way if the base isn't tagged. Because something needs tagging, I do think Chemistry needs to be in level 1.
>>>     Neil
>>>
>>>
>>> On Mon, Sep 14, 2020 at 1:50 PM Deyan Ginev <deyan.ginev@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>       Thanks for forwarding Neil!
>>>
>>>       It is indeed curious that they are basically asking for a
>>>       presentation-tree readout, no need for semantics at all -- even the
>>>       subscripts are read as-is. If we are to agree with that feedback
>>>       unconditionally, one wonders if we should be excluding chemistry from
>>>       level 1 entirely, as it won't have any material impact compared to raw
>>>       pMML, and it may get the acceptable level of speech without any
>>>       additional annotation work.
>>>
>>>       Greetings,
>>>       Deyan
>>>
>>>       On Mon, Sep 14, 2020 at 1:07 PM Neil Soiffer <soiffer@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
>>>      >
>>>      >
>>>      > With Cary's permission, I am forwarding this message from the Chemistry CG to the MathML mailing
>>>       list.
>>>      >
>>>      > ---------- Forwarded message ---------
>>>      > From: Supalo, Cary A <csupalo@ets.org>
>>>      > Date: Mon, Sep 7, 2020 at 4:09 PM
>>>      > Subject: RE: Request for phone meeting
>>>      > To: Neil Soiffer <soiffer@alum.mit.edu>
>>>      >
>>>      >
>>>      >
>>>      >
>>>      >
>>>      >
>>>      >
>>>      >
>>>      > Dear Neil,
>>>      >
>>>      >
>>>      >
>>>      > A small group of chemistry community members met informally last week to discuss your request more
>>>       at length. The following bulleted list of points are what we perceive as a starting point for a
>>>       fruitful discussion on what further disambiguation of chemistry terminology is needed to support this
>>>       collaborative effort between the MathML and the chemistry community. We feel and know that without
>>>       the strong collaboration we have, and without the input from the MathML community, it would be a
>>>       detriment to the print disabled communities. On our initial assessment of your request at our last
>>>       meeting, we have three examples of conventions we would like to see fully implemented:
>>>      >
>>>      >
>>>      >
>>>      >
>>>      >
>>>      > We feel elements and compounds should be read as letters, including the designation of the capital
>>>       letter. Sodium (Na), for example, should be read “cap N a”. Chlorine (Cl) as “Cap C l”. Sodium
>>>       chloride “cap N a cap C l”. Methane (CH4) as “cap C cap H sub 4”.
>>>      >
>>>      >
>>>      >
>>>      > With regards to the question regarding elements and compounds being read with their proper names we
>>>       feel is a pedagogical question that should be left up to the individual user to decide. If they wish
>>>       proper names to be spoken by their screen reader, this can be enabled by means of the custom language
>>>       dictionary that is offered by JAWS and NVDA.
>>>      >
>>>      > We also feel strongly that units should be read as units. We imagine MathML probably already has
>>>       many unit designations already that we can leverage. Chemistry content should be able to benefit from
>>>       the same unit designations.
>>>      >
>>>      >
>>>      >
>>>      > Anything that is not disambiguated/defined in our table should also be read “as is,” as the letters
>>>       they are defined.
>>>      >
>>>      >
>>>      >
>>>      > We hope this clarification is the first step to a lengthier discussion on optimization of
>>>       disambiguation of chemistry content. It was our position all along that the table we provided to the
>>>       MathML group was a first step. We welcome the opportunity to meet with you to discuss logical next
>>>       steps at future meetings. We welcome and highly value this collaboration between the chemistry and
>>>       math ML communities. If you would like to include this type of topic as an agenda item for a future
>>>       Chemistry Community meeting, we are certainly happy to do so.
>>>      >
>>>      >
>>>      >
>>>      > Thank you very much for your continued support of our community where we value your input and
>>>       feedback highly.
>>>      >
>>>      > Cary
>>>      >
>>>      >
>>>      >
>>>      >
>>>      >
>>>      >
>>>      >
>>>      > From: Neil Soiffer <soiffer@alum.mit.edu>
>>>      > Sent: Sunday, August 30, 2020 12:35 AM
>>>      > To: Supalo, Cary A <csupalo@ets.org>
>>>      > Cc: Barrett, Dan <Dan.Barrett@hmhco.com>
>>>      > Subject: Re: Request for phone meeting
>>>      >
>>>      >
>>>      >
>>>      > The MathML CG talked about chemistry issues a little this week in the context of a larger issue
>>>       that we are trying to resolve. As I mentioned, a subject area sets defaults, so most authors don't
>>>       need to worry about labelling every token. But there are defaults, so every token has a meaning given
>>>       to it by an attr (currently being called "semantics" but likely will change).  For chemistry and for
>>>       that matter, units, the issue came up: how detailed are the attr values? For example, do we have
>>>       semantics="units" or do we have semantics="millimeters", etc. For chemistry, is it
>>>       semantics="element" or semantics="hydrogen", etc. I had thought everyone was on board with "unit" and
>>>       "element", but I was wrong, so this issue needs to be hashed out. Because this needs resolution, it
>>>       probably doesn't make sense to discuss it at the chem CG call this week.
>>>      >
>>>      >
>>>      >
>>>      > There is a question that you or maybe the group can answer... if I have NaCl suitably marked up in
>>>       MathML, should that always be 'spelled out' in speech? If sometimes it should be "sodium chloride" in
>>>       speech and maybe sometimes "salt", who determines that? The author? The reader? The answer to that
>>>       question will inform a discussion about labelling them 'element' (which would allow for various forms
>>>       of speech) vs. specifically labelling them 'hydrogen' or for that matter not labeling them at all so
>>>       that the letters are always just the letters.
>>>      >
>>>      >
>>>      >
>>>      >     Neil
>>>      >
>>>      >
>>>
>>>
>>>
>
>