[Blindmath] accessible math websites

[Michael Whapples]

Do you mean: how do you know if the alt tag is LaTeX or do you mean how 
to find out what the alt tag is?

If it is the first then it might be worth you doing a little reading to 
find out the basics of LaTeX. To give a short example:
The quadratic formula would be written as:
\frac{-b \pm \sqrt{b^2 -4ac}}{2a}
The \frac means fraction and the content between the first set of braces 
(the symbols { } ) is the numerator and the content of the second set of 
braces is the denominator. The \pm means plus minus and the \sqrt means 
square root and the braces surround what is to be square rooted. the b^2 
means b squared. Most LaTeX commands start with a backslash (\). There 
are a number of tutorials online for LaTeX or I could send you a sample 
LaTeX file which I used to use to test LaTeX to Braille translation 
(this file has the command and then a description/name in words after 
it), this file probably would give you a good start for reading LaTeX.

If its identifying the alt tag of the image then I would hope jaws 
should just speak this (you may have come across other images where a 
text description is associated with it). As I don't know jaws I can't 
say what, if anything, should be done with that.

Wikipedia does tend to use LaTeX in the alt tags, so if you are still 
unsure about what I mean then have a look at a maths item there eg. the 
quadratic equation page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadratic_equation

Hope this helps explain it.

Michael Whapples
On 16/03/09 01:07, sarah.jevnikar at utoronto.ca wrote:
> Hi Michael,
> That's good advice. I know this si a silly question, but how would I 
> know if an equation appears in LaTeX?
> Thank you,
> Sarah
>
>
>
>
>
> Quoting Michael Whapples <mwhapples at aim.com>:
>
>> It's not good when websites use images for the equations, but some do
>> include the LaTeX source for the equation as the alt tag text. Are
>> these websites doing this? If not then contact the page author if
>> possible to explain the difficulty caused and suggest that they at
>> least include the LaTeX for the equation in the alt tag, if not
>> actually change to mathml. There are other reasons than the one you
>> raised why images for equations is not good, the inability of adjusting
>> the visual appearance for those who need large print or an alternative
>> colour scheme, the inability for the equation/maths to be searchable,
>> etc.
>>
>> Learning to read LaTeX is probably well worth your time. Reading LaTeX
>> I feel is easier than learning to write it (IE. if you don't know a
>> particular command used then either you can have a pretty good guess at
>> what it is from the name and surroundings or you have a specific
>> command to search for).
>>
>> Sorry I haven't been too useful on actual websites which are of use,
>> but I feel LaTeX source for equations isn't too much to ask for, and
>> ideally you shouldn't be restricted to a few websites.
>>
>> Michael Whapples
>> On 15/03/09 20:39, sarah.jevnikar at utoronto.ca wrote:
>>> Hi all,
>>> Every so often, I find my math text inadequately explains a topic, 
>>> and so I wish to look it up online. However I find many math 
>>> websites have equations as images that JAWS won't read. Are there 
>>> any sites you know of which explain mathematical concepts that are 
>>> JAWS-friendly?
>>> Thank you for your help,
>>> Sarah Jevnikar
>>>
>>>
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