- From: Janina Sajka <janina@rednote.net>
- Date: Mon, 11 Aug 2014 09:52:14 -0400
- To: Greg Kraus <gdkraus@ncsu.edu>
- Cc: John Foliot <john@foliot.ca>, James Craig <jcraig@apple.com>, Richard Schwerdtfeger <schwer@us.ibm.com>, cooper@w3.org, PF <public-pfwg@w3.org>, Sean J Keegan <skeegan@stanford.edu>
Very interesting and encouraging news, thanks! Just a quick nit for clarification... Greg Kraus writes: > I actually just got back from a conference where I got to see some of > the technologies in development to make math accessible, and I was > very impressed. > ... > The future was what was really exciting. DesignScience has a > development version of MathPlayer that can work with any screen > reader, as long as the screen reader calls the MathPlayer API. NVDA > already has this functionality incorporated into a development branch. To my mind, "any screen reader" would need to cover multiple OS, OS X as well as IOS, Linux as well as Android. Where is this API published, do you know. What's its licensing? Janina > The end result was that NVDA in FF was able to fully interact with > MathML. Additionally, math stored in PDFs was also able to work with > NVDA. That's something that has never been a possibility before, to my > knowledge. > > The other new major feature in the development version of MathPlayer > is the ability to allow screen readers the ability to interact with > the math expressions in much more meaningful ways than has ever been > possible before. Screen readers users can zoom in and out on different > parts of the expression to concentrate on different parts. They can > leave placeholders in different parts of the equation to jump from > section to section. They also have more options for navigating through > an equation - reading by individual term, reading by logical groupings > (e.g. use the plus and minus signs as sectional markers to read only > one term at a time). > > This new MathPlayer is not limited to screen readers. It can work with > literacy software too. So the current state of math accessibility is > not great. If Design Science ultimately makes their new version > available, and if NVDA (or VoiceOver - nudge, nudge) incorporates the > functionality into their production release, math accessibility will > take a huge leap forward. > > Greg > -- > Greg Kraus > University IT Accessibility Coordinator > NC State University > 919.513.4087 > gdkraus@ncsu.edu > http://go.ncsu.edu/itaccess > > > On Sun, Aug 10, 2014 at 9:00 PM, John Foliot <john@foliot.ca> wrote: > > James Craig wrote: > >> > >> Furthermore, much has changed in the last half a decade since > >> this text was written. The native implementations of accessible > >> MathML are vastly superior to plain text approximations of Math > >> equations, even allowing spacial exploration of equations, and > >> Nemeth Braille output. All modern but unsupported browsers can > >> be polyfilled to include support with libraries like MathJax. > > > > James, I wish I could share your optimism. As recently as May of this year, > > the reports I received from my contacts in the academic world suggest that the > > support you are hoping for is far less robust than you may think. I urge you > > to read all of the comments appended to my HTML5/a11y-TF note: > > http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-a11y/2014May/0090.html > > > > I further recall that a number of EDU representatives at CSUN this spring were > > lamenting the fact that support appeared to be going backward, not forward; > > with Google backing out of Chrome support, and non-existent support in IE11 > > they were quiet upset as I recall. Frankly today, it appears that to provide > > real math support at the EDU level, institutions are resorting to recreating > > the content in MS Word or Daisy: > > > > "To make HMTL-based math accessible requires the use of MathPlayer > > from DesignScience. MathPlayer requires IE 9 or less and will not work IE > > 11. They say it partially works with IE 10. Without MathPlayer the other two > > options for consuming accessible math are either converting to a DAISY > > format or MS Word." (G. Kraus 5/7/14) > > > >> > >> Mainstream and accessibility support for MathML is only getting > >> better, and I think it's fine to acknowledge that progress in a > >> yet-to-be-written non-normative note. > > > > I have no issue with noting that MathML is a future-forward technique, but > > non-normatively we should also acknowledge that current support is, at best, > > weak. As such, the same non-normative document should also include other, > > alternative means of achieving accessibility support, which I believe is what > > Rich was suggesting, and is certainly what I am suggesting. > > > > JF > > > > -- Janina Sajka, Phone: +1.443.300.2200 sip:janina@asterisk.rednote.net Email: janina@rednote.net Linux Foundation Fellow Executive Chair, Accessibility Workgroup: http://a11y.org The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) Chair, Protocols & Formats http://www.w3.org/wai/pf Indie UI http://www.w3.org/WAI/IndieUI/
Received on Monday, 11 August 2014 13:53:04 UTC