Re: Comment on WAI-ARIA Role

Yes, I'd be happy to help out.


Neil Soiffer
Senior Scientist
Design Science, Inc.
www.dessci.com
~ Makers of Equation Editor, MathType, MathPlayer and MathFlow ~

On Tue, Feb 26, 2008 at 11:21 AM, Richard Schwerdtfeger <schwer@us.ibm.com>
wrote:

>  Hi Neil,
>
> That is super - and something concrete. So, a plug-in potentially could
> process the image. If we put it in, would you be willing to write us a best
> practices section on it - even if it is not in full detail?
>
> Rich
>
>
> Rich Schwerdtfeger
> Distinguished Engineer, SWG Accessibility Architect/Strategist
> Chair, IBM Accessibility Architecture Review Board
> blog: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/schwer
> [image: Inactive hide details for "Neil Soiffer" <Neils@dessci.com>]"Neil
> Soiffer" <Neils@dessci.com>
>
>
>
>      *"Neil Soiffer" <Neils@dessci.com>*
>             Sent by: neil.soiffer@gmail.com
>
>             02/25/2008 03:34 AM
>
>
> To
>
> Richard Schwerdtfeger/Austin/IBM@IBMUS
>
> cc
>
> public-pfwg-comments@w3.org, w3c-wai-pf@w3.org, w3c-wai-pf-request@w3.org
> Subject
>
> Re: Comment on WAI-ARIA Role
>
> We have been doing some experiments, but don't have a product for it.
> However, MathType 6 does allow you to copy images from sources like
> wikipedia which contain TeX and paste them into MathType. It recognizes that
> the TeX and does the conversion to its internal format. So, while not a web
> browser solution, there is a proof of concept out there. We have gotten very
> positive feedback on this feature (it was added to our latest release last
> fall).
>
> Neil Soiffer
> Senior Scientist
> Design Science, Inc.*
> **neils@dessci.com* <neils@dessci.com>*
> **www.dessci.com* <http://www.dessci.com/>
> ~ Makers of Equation Editor, MathType, MathPlayer and MathFlow ~
>
>
> On Sun, Feb 24, 2008 at 2:23 PM, Richard Schwerdtfeger <*schwer@us.ibm.com
> * <schwer@us.ibm.com>> wrote:
>
>
>    Hi Neil,
>
>    Thank you for the request. WAI-ARIA 1.0 is very close to last call
>    and we are trying to lock it down. Also, one of our key implementations,
>    Firefox 3, is close to being locked down. So, we will discuss this but at
>    this point it is very unlikely we can get this into 1.0. Also, if we
>    were to add a new role there are a number of people waiting in the wings
>    that would like to be considered and this would open up the flood gates.
>
>    We have talked about the follow-on for 1.0 and we have been talking
>    about extensibility for that. Is there a math handler that can do math
>    interpretation from an image?
>
>    I have to ask though: Would it not be better to create a taxonomy
>    for Math than simply calling something a Math object type?
>
>    Rich
>
>
>    Rich Schwerdtfeger
>    Distinguished Engineer, SWG Accessibility Architect/Strategist
>    Chair, IBM Accessibility Architecture Review Board
>    blog: *http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/schwer*<http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/schwer>
>
>      *"Neil Soiffer" <**Neils@dessci.com* <Neils@dessci.com>*>*
>    Sent by: *w3c-wai-pf-request@w3.org* <w3c-wai-pf-request@w3.org>
>
>    02/21/2008 01:25 AM
>       To
>    *w3c-wai-pf@w3.org* <w3c-wai-pf@w3.org>, *
>    public-pfwg-comments@w3.org* <public-pfwg-comments@w3.org>  cc
>      Subject
>    Comment on WAI-ARIA Role
>
>
>
>    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*<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
>    *<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* <neils@dessci.com>*
>    **www.dessci.com* <http://www.dessci.com/>
>    ~ Makers of Equation Editor, MathType, MathPlayer and MathFlow ~
>
>    *
>    * <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nth_root>
>
>
>