Re: Math and Science

It is an accessibility issue here at UIUC as instructors put more math and
science information on the WWW.  There is no immediate solution to marking
up math (until MathML rendering technologies become more available) or
science markup (maybe someday there will be markup languages).  It would be
nice to have a central reference point on how people should do this now and
what to do in the future, especially to potentially make the markup easily
translatable to other forms like tactile graphics and nemith Braille
representations.  Dr. Gardner at Oregon State has done alot of work in this
area would be a good reference.

But it seems that I have struck a dissonant cord with the group (at least
the W3C staff in the group) that this is not an important enough topic for
inclusion in the guidelines, except as examples of how images are
occasionally used.

Jon
   

At 05:18 PM 1/25/99 -0500, Ian Jacobs wrote:
>Charles McCathieNevile wrote:
>> 
>> I think we identified someplaces where a discussion of including
>> Mathematical content could be included within the Guidelines document. I
>> still don't see a Guideline which relates to Math. Maybe a Checkpoint.
>
>I don't see any reason to single out "Math" and "Science" in 
>the Guidelines. What particular accessibility issues do they raise?
>What distinguishes those subjects from Architecture or Philosophy
>or Art History?
>
>I could see adding a checkpoint to the guidelines that reads
>something like:
>
> "Where it's possible to mark up content (for example
>  mathematical equations) instead of using images, 
>  use a markup language."
>
>Then, in the techniques document, one could talk about
>using MathML to mark up math content.
>
> - Ian
>
>-- 
>Ian Jacobs (jacobs@w3.org) 
>Tel/Fax: (212) 684-1814 
>http://www.w3.org/People/Jacobs
> 
Jon Gunderson, Ph.D., ATP
Coordinator of Assistive Communication and Information Technology
Division of Rehabilitation - Education Services
University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign
1207 S. Oak Street
Champaign, IL 61820

Voice: 217-244-5870
Fax: 217-333-0248
E-mail: jongund@uiuc.edu
WWW:	http://www.staff.uiuc.edu/~jongund
	http://www.als.uiuc.edu/InfoTechAccess

Received on Monday, 25 January 1999 18:12:29 UTC