Re: [EXTERNAL] Re: [www-math] <none>

@Murray: Apropos to Deyan's question:

How did you decide which Unicode characters to support (in English and
elsewhere)? Which notations? Were the decisions based on some data or (as
with me) past experience/judgement under the limitations of time?

    Neil


On Fri, Feb 10, 2023 at 2:56 PM Murray Sargent <
murrays@exchange.microsoft.com> wrote:

> There’s also the Narrator AT, which uses the math speech engine that I
> wrote. Admittedly, it doesn’t know about intervals, per se, but it knows
> vector calculus 😊 And it can speak math in over 18 languages. As do
> other ATs, it says “squared”, “cubed”, “square root”, “cube root”, etc. The
> Unicode math symbols that it can speak are documented in Math Speech
> Strings and Localization - Math in Office (microsoft.com)
> <https://devblogs.microsoft.com/math-in-office/math-speech-strings-and-localization/>.
> I hope to augment the list when we have figured out our intents.
>
>
>
> Part of the reason I emphasize using Unicode math symbols where available
> instead of intent is that it’ll make enhancing UnicodeMath
> <https://www.unicode.org/notes/tn28/UTN28-PlainTextMath-v3.1.pdf> more
> straightforward. I’ll need to add a “hidden field” to UnicodeMath to house
> intents in general, but that’s relatively clumsy compared to using symbols
> with the built-in semantics.
>
>
>
> Thanks,
>
> Murray
>
>
>
> *From:* Neil Soiffer <soiffer@alum.mit.edu>
> *Sent:* Friday, February 10, 2023 1:13 PM
> *To:* Deyan Ginev <deyan.ginev@gmail.com>
> *Cc:* www-math@w3.org
> *Subject:* [EXTERNAL] Re: [www-math] <none>
>
>
>
> > It would be quite informative for the group to understand why and where
> these inconsistencies arise, and if different implementers have strong
> reasons for their choices
>
>
>
> This is easy to answer: because people have limited resources and they
> implement what they can and based on their guess as to what is most
> important and what they know. There are no rules or guides as to what to do
> and the space of options is vast. There are thousands of Unicode characters
> that might occur in STEM content. If you only have time to translate
> 200-300 of them, there is nothing out there at the moment that says "these
> are the most common ones" or even more specifically, "in calculus, these
> are the symbols that are used" (actually I do have a paper with some data
> on calculus textbooks, but it is only based on a few calculus books).
> Similarly, there is nothing out there saying "these are common notations".
> People usually implement squared, cubed, square root, and cube root, but
> commonality rapidly drops from there. There isn't anywhere that says "use
> ... from .. to  ... of ...' for large ops in an munderover, etc., so some
> systems might miss that.
>
>
>
> As for inviting implementers...
>
>
>
> I more or less represent what NVDA does since I did MathPlayer, and now
> MathCAT and those are what most people use with NVDA AFAIK -- there is also
> Access8Math addon but I don't think it is widely used based on people I've
> talked to.
>
>
>
> The other screen readers are JAWS, VoiceOver, and ORCA (linux). I know a
> contact at JAWS I can ask about joining a call. Based on past experience
> where other W3C groups asked for someone to talk with them, there is only a
> small chance that will happen. But if the group is interested (I'll poll
> the group at the meeting next week), I'll ask.
>
>
>
> I don't know anyone in the VoiceOver group. Apple does have a
> representative in the ARIA group -- maybe he can suggest someone. It's a
> long shot they will be willing to join for a call -- Apple tends to be very
> tight-lipped/standard committee avoidant.
>
>
>
> I've been trying to find someone to talk to in the ORCA community about
> their math support. I know a previous developer, but she hasn't worked on
> math in years and has moved up the W3C food chain and is extremely over
> committed now and said she can't help me; again dubious she would want to
> talk to a group given she doesn't work on math accessibility anymore.
> AFAIK, no one has worked on math accessibility in ORCA in years.
>
>
>
> In the group, both Steve and Sam have been in the AT community for years;
> Sam is an AT developer. So we do have some pretty good expertise in the
> group wrt to accessibility.
>
>
>
>     Neil
>
>
>
>
>
> On Fri, Feb 10, 2023 at 12:37 PM Deyan Ginev <deyan.ginev@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> Hi Neil,
>
>
>
> Would it be possible to invite multiple AT representatives from the
> systems in question to the group? Maybe not as permanent members (as that
> is a large admin burden) but at least for a small invited talk each?
>
>
>
> It would be quite informative for the group to understand why and where
> these inconsistencies arise, and if different implementers have strong
> reasons for their choices.
>
> Some would consider that as a prerequisite to standardizing one outcome
> over another, which is what a "Default" ruleset represents.
>
>
>
> It would also be helpful to get written testimonies of the affected AT
> users, so that we can get a clearer view of their pain points. Consider the
> way arXiv excerpted their user study as five "Themes" at the end of their
> accessibility report:
>
> https://info.arxiv.org/about/accessibility_research_report.html
> <https://nam06.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Finfo.arxiv.org%2Fabout%2Faccessibility_research_report.html&data=05%7C01%7Cmurrays%40exchange.microsoft.com%7Ca225090dd5f84d989c9b08db0bab9945%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C1%7C0%7C638116603888981351%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=bDakO9Ogdosm5hGJs1EhvCURErsIRns2MN%2B%2Fld2dMVE%3D&reserved=0>
>
>
>
> It is easy to believe there is room for improvement, but hard to see the
> constructive actions our group could take without more thorough preparation.
>
>
>
> Greetings,
>
> Deyan
>
>
>
> On Fri, Feb 10, 2023 at 3:26 PM Neil Soiffer <soiffer@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
>
> I was part of a virtual STEM accessibility conference for the last two
> days. In the wrap up, a few people complained that there isn't a lot of
> consistency among AT. Some read one character ok (in MathML) and another
> won't read it. I'm not sure whether anyone complained about inconsistency
> with the speech other than dropping characters (JAWS seems to drop parens
> in many cases where it shouldn't) or speaking something ambiguously. I
> volunteered that our group was considering issuing some baseline guidance
> to AT as to minimal support they should have and people felt that was a
> good idea.
>
>
>
> This relates back to defaults. Whether we add something to spec in an
> appendix or produce a note, it seems like the AT users at least feel it
> would be a good idea to have some minimal baseline all AT should support. I
> suspect that it would also be helpful for AT developers so they know "this
> is the important part" -- don't skip support for these notations and these
> characters.
>
>
>
>     Neil
>
>
>
>