Re: MathML - and action 1494.

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