[math-on-web] CG meeting minutes, 2018/04/26

Hi everyone,

Here are the minutes from the meeting on April 26.

Best,
Peter.


# MathOnWeb CG 2018-04-26

* Present: Peter, Mike Dworski, Volker, Charles, Arno, Stephen Bosser, Lina
Wu
  * Regrets: Dani, John Pedersen
* intros / new on the call
 * Mike: digitizing books, mostly OCR, PDF book scans, to epub
   * interesrted in MathML to solve this
   * saw Peter's ebookcraft talk, reachd out
  * Charles: with Benetech, working to get math into epub books
    * working on an advanced book with an approach for that
    * we'll be doing widespread testing next month or os
  * Volker: I do math a11y ever since I worked on ChromeVox, integrated
into MathJax, also work there, also speech rule engine
  * Arno: got interested math on the web from editing/authoring, =>
mathlive.io
  * Peter:
* AGENDA: CSS TF update
  * building samples for stretchy fences and enclosures; nice progress
  * work item: indices of general root
  * Charles: what about surd?
    * Peter: main problem there is more the aligment of border top and
square root sing
  * Arno: the zoom in particular
    * might be something to talk to CSS WG about since browser zoom and
rounding there is probably not specified
  * Mike: how is accessibility with roots?
    * Peter: really hard, no reliable way to detect; imho textual
alternative works
    * Volker: and that basic problem remains
      * might look like a fraciton/root but might not be
    * Arno: having multiple representations is probably the way to go
      * have visual (HTML/SVG)
      * alternative representation (MathML, LaTeX, text description)
      * an authoring problem: needs to be captured at authoring time
    * Charles: many publishers just throw in images
      * our Diagrammer project tries to generate multiple formats
      * having the semantic for each of these is something we might have to
look at
      * maybe similar to DPUB ARIA module
* intro: Stephen Blosser & Lina Wu, Michigan State
  * we're working on an authoring tool for LaTeX to MathML
  * collaborative grant to help math profs create text books, handouts etc
for our students
  * ~2000 students, attempting to make it easier for us to produce content
  * one graduate student now at Apple working on a11y (non-visual dev)
    * came through program and we had to do it the hardway
    * re-type them via scientific notebook, convert to MathML
    * then had a locked down computer w/o upgrades so that JAWS+browser
would use it
    * provided Nemeth braille as well
  * Arno: sounds very interesting
    * with mathlive mostly focused on (accessible) editing
    * in the mean time accepted latex input
    * output also mathml, speech text as well
  * Stephen&Liu:
    * tool live at msumathonline.com
    * you can use it
    * would be interested in feedback
  * Volker: looks interesting, usingn MathJax
    * we also have grant with BigTen to get Nemeth into it
    * maybe that's interesting
    * have you looked at pandoc?
      * sounds interesting
    * Peter: how can the gorup help you? and vice versa?
    * Stephen: we want to improve our a11y documents
        * Project with Stephen helps our professors
        * help authors -- first step in universal design -- make alt text
        * have non-visual users access the content directly, without
reprocessing from our end
        * also work with schools in India, Haiti, looking for ways to make
their maths more accessible
        * our objective is to help those blind usres
        * for the group helping the wider Big10
        * see more books would help
        * Charles: we're working on this at Benetech

* AGENDA: TPAC.
  * Peter: do we want time at TPAC?
  * => Yes. (Peter, Volker, Arno, Charles, probably Dani)
  * Oct 20ish

* AGENDA: JSON proposal
  * Arno: I'm refining the proposal from feedback but looking for more
  * Peter: should we have a dedicated meeting?
    * Arno: yes. we can also walk through the proposal