Comment on WAI-ARIA Role

I think role="math" is a sufficiently simple solution to the
problem at hand, and something that we can build on over time.

Neil Soiffer writes:
 > I work for Design Science, which is a W3C member.  I am a member of the
 > MathML Working Group and have been since its inception.  I am also chair of
 > the DAISY/Math Working Group.  That WG developed a spec that added MathML to
 > DAISY; it was approved about a year ago.  Our company developed MathPlayer,
 > the standard "plug-in" for IE to display MathML both visually and aurally.
 > MathPlayer works with JAWS, Window-Eyes, TextHELP, and other AT to make math
 > encoded with MathML accessible.  It is capable of generating speech,
 > synchronized highlighting, and braille from the MathML.
 > 
 > I have a request for an additional "role" to further support math
 > accessibility.  First, some context...
 > 
 > Because of browser implementation issues, MathML adoption has not been as
 > widespread as it should otherwise be.  A lot of people/sites, including
 > wikipedia, still use images for math.  However, the images often include alt
 > text or embedded comments that could be used to make the image accessible.
 > An idea that Design Science has been thinking about is writing JavaScript
 > that grabs the alt text or embedded comments and provides some level of
 > accessibility.  For example, if the image contains embedded MathML and
 > MathPlayer was installed, then the javascript could rewrite the page as one
 > containing MathML and MathPlayer could take over display and interaction
 > with AT.  If MathPlayer wasn't installed (for example, someone is running
 > Firefox on Linux), the JavaScript could still do the translation of MathML
 > to speech and braille.  It wouldn't be able to magnify or sync highlight.
 > If TeX or some other known format was found, the JavaScript could translate
 > it to MathML and then make it accessible.
 > 
 > The same JavaScript accessibility issues arise with this idea as with other
 > JavaScript -- AT doesn't know about the JavaScript and doesn't know that the
 > image (or div/span for JSMath) is really math.  If it did know, then it
 > could call on our interfaces (or eventually some standard expert handler
 > interface) and get an appropriate string to speak or string to send to the
 > braille display (math has it own braille codes and they are not identical
 > to what is spoken).
 > 
 > Now for the suggestion...  ARIA should have a way to say 'this element is
 > actually math'.  My non-expert suggestion for how to do this would be to add
 > a "math" role to the list of known roles.  'math' would be similar to 'grid'
 > in that it represents document structure and contains other elements.
 > Ideally, an extensible mechanism would be desirable, but math is an obvious
 > case that maps onto an existing W3C standard and would enhance existing
 > pages that don't use MathML.
 > 
 > As a real life example from Wikipedia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nth_root],
 > the first image in the XHTML could potentially be made accessible if AT knew
 > about it by adding a role attribute as
 > <img class="tex" alt="\sqrt[n]{a}" role="math" src="
 > http://upload.wikimedia.org/math/9/a/2/9a2b6d33f3d62a1e8bd99c76f3cb79f5.png
 > ">
 > 
 > [Note:  the alt text is present on the Wikipedia page.  The TeX was used to
 > generate the image in the first place]
 > 
 > Adding role="math" says that the alt text or comments in the image contains
 > information that can be used for accessibility purposes.  It alerts AT
 > software so that they can call on some expert math handler to get
 > information about how to handle the element.
 > 
 > Neil Soiffer
 > Senior Scientist
 > Design Science, Inc.
 > neils@dessci.com
 > www.dessci.com
 > ~ Makers of Equation Editor, MathType, MathPlayer and MathFlow ~
 > 
 > 
 >  <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nth_root>

-- 
Best Regards,
--raman

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Received on Friday, 22 February 2008 23:55:44 UTC