[Blindmath] accessible math websites

Michael Whapples mwhapples at aim.com
Mon Mar 16 22:30:32 UTC 2009 

Where did I blame the tool (LaTeX)? The problem lay in the output 
formats (as I said originally). No matter what output format, PDF, DVI, 
PS, HTML/mathml the accessibility tools just couldn't give enough 
information for me to be certain I had the actual formatting. Also I 
should really be checking the particular output I will be submitting, 
the HTML/MathML is most likely to differ in its physical layout to the 
PDF as HTML may be displayed differently in different browsers. This 
impacts back to the LaTeX as that is how I authored the document. 
Whether any other tool out there (eg. wysiwyg editor) could give that in 
an accessible form is another matter (they probably cannot) but what a 
wysiwyg editor can or cannot do doesn't impact on the accessibility of 
LaTeX.

Whether knowing the LaTeX was the problem, I doubt it, even my tutor who 
I would say is very proficient in LaTeX didn't know the actual answer. 
It took a bit of hunting around on the internet for me to find a 
solution which did exactly what I needed.

While LaTeX was able to do this formatting/layout I needed, it is the 
one thig LaTeX can be awkward about due to its design. LaTeX is designed 
to remove the need for the author to be concerned with the physical 
layout of the document, leaving them to focus on the content. When 
trying to override what LaTeX wants to do automatically can lead to the 
document being more complicated than ideally it could be.

LaTeX is so huge in what it can do it is difficult (may be even 
impossible) to know the whole of LaTeX, and when we need to do something 
new we may need to use parts of LaTeX new to us. These newly learnt 
parts of LaTeX may be described to us, but if not described in the 
entirity (how it will work with other parts of LaTeX, all the options we 
can give it, etc) we can only have a very good guess what the output 
will be. Sometimes (depending on the person sometimes may only be a few 
times for others it may be most of the time) we can guess correctly, but 
there will be times when we guess wrong.

For documents where we are concerned about the result due to the 
importance of the document to us, we naturally want to check what is 
being submitted. For the above reasons, I hope I stated it at a level 
understandable by you, there have been specific circumstances where 
LaTeX and associated tools aren't enough on there own for me to be 
certain I am submitting what I want to submit.

May be some of the above doesn't apply to you, may be you have learnt 
the full LaTeX language to the point where there are no possible 
questions remaining, may be you never have documents which matter enough 
to need checking before submitting, may be you have something you are 
keeping secret which helps in the checking stage, etc. If this is the 
case then share this with us, how did you learn the whole LaTeX language 
(I do mean the whole thing not just a subset), what are you using to 
check output files, etc? Let me know then I can be quiet as I will be 
happy that the use of LaTeX for producing documents is 100% accessible 
as I won't have any cases to prove otherwise.

Michael Whapples
On 16/03/09 20:28, P. R. Stanley wrote:
> Well then maybe you should learn your LaTeX before attempting to be 
> creative with it.
> If there ever was a case of the workman blaming the tool or whatever 
> the expression is. _smile*
>
> By the way, the compiled document is no longer LaTeX. It's PDF or DVI 
> or whatever format you choose but not LaTeX.
> Paul
> At 10:38 16/03/2009, you wrote:
>> "LaTeX is the only 100% accessible typesetting tool for the blind"
>> Really? I feel that needs questioning from both directions. I am sure 
>> there probably are other tools just as accessible as LaTeX but LaTeX 
>> is by far the most popular one which is useable. The other side is 
>> whether LaTeX is really 100% accessible, well the source code might 
>> be but the compiled document isn't. I remember when I wanted to 
>> achieve a very specific formatting I found it hard to get an output 
>> where I could independently confirm the output was actually formatted 
>> as I needed. As I remember I had to resort to asking a sighted person 
>> to check the formatting for me and it took a few attempts at the 
>> source code to actually get exactly what I needed. May be these cases 
>> are rare, but so long as a single case exists then a 100% 
>> accessibility claim is an exageration.
>>
>> Michael Whapples
>> On 16/03/09 06:34, P. R. Stanley wrote:
>>> I wasn't refering to you personally. It was you as in general.
>>> as I have already explained, wysewyg was invented to serve people 
>>> like you i.e. the sighted. LaTeX by some fortunate accident happened 
>>> to be just the thing we blind folks need in order to ensure that the 
>>> document looks as presentable as possible.
>>> Difficult or not LaTeX is the only 100% accessible typesetting tool 
>>> for the blind and you cannot and will not be able to change and I'm 
>>> not going to sit quietly while some half baked idea gets promoted 
>>> solely as to make money for a handful of opportunists!
>>> and before you get excited, no, I am not alluding to you.
>>> Paul
>>>
>>>
>>> At 05:33 16/03/2009, you wrote:
>>>> FYI: I know TeX reasonably well. I wrote my thesis in it and many 
>>>> papers
>>>> in it, but I don't use it anymore (mostly) because I hate the write,
>>>> "compile", fix, "compile", fix, etc., loop that WYSIWYG eliminates. 
>>>> I do
>>>> advocate that people going into math or physics and a few other 
>>>> sciences
>>>> learn it because many of their colleagues will use it and you will 
>>>> see it
>>>> and need to correspond with them using it. Knowing it doesn't mean 
>>>> using it
>>>> though.
>>>>
>>>> The point about actuarial notation is that it is not as 
>>>> straightforward in
>>>> TeX as a fraction or superscript is. As you can see, the "angle" 
>>>> part is
>>>> split among the overline and the |, and those constructs break 
>>>> apart the
>>>> operands in a semantically unnatural way, making comprehension 
>>>> harder. If
>>>> one were using real TeX, you'd write a macro to do this and it 
>>>> would be more
>>>> understandable, but the TeX variant used by Wikipedia (texvc) and 
>>>> most other
>>>> web-oriented systems is not extensible and only support a very limited
>>>> subset of TeX.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Neil Soiffer
>>>> Senior Scientist
>>>> Design Science, Inc.
>>>> www.dessci.com
>>>> ~ Makers of MathType, MathFlow, MathPlayer, MathDaisy, WebEQ, Equation
>>>> Editor ~
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Sun, Mar 15, 2009 at 6:38 PM, P. R. Stanley 
>>>> <prstanley at ntlworld.com>wrote:
>>>>
>>>> > I'm sorry, Neil, what is the point you're making? You may not 
>>>> understand it
>>>> > straightaway but with a little bit of work and patience you can 
>>>> get to know
>>>> > the system. The benenfits of LaTeX which have been highlighted on 
>>>> this list
>>>> > on many occasions surely must make it worth the effort.
>>>> > Cheers
>>>> > Paul
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> > At 00:31 16/03/2009, you wrote:
>>>> >
>>>> >> If you are willing to deal with TeX, take a look at Wikipedia. 
>>>> The images
>>>> >> use TeX as the alt text. Unfortunately, TeX is pretty cryptic for
>>>> >> actuarial
>>>> >> notations. For example, "a angle n i" is represented as
>>>> >> "a_{\overline{n|}i}" Take a look at
>>>> >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actuarial_notation
>>>> >> and see if it is understandable.
>>>> >>
>>>> >> For more basic concepts (such as Algebra I and II), there are 
>>>> sites such
>>>> >> as
>>>> >> www.onemathematicalcat.org that use MathML and are accessible via
>>>> >> MathPlayer
>>>> >> with JAWS.
>>>> >>
>>>> >> Neil Soiffer
>>>> >> Senior Scientist
>>>> >> Design Science, Inc.
>>>> >> www.dessci.com
>>>> >> ~ Makers of MathType, MathFlow, MathPlayer, MathDaisy, WebEQ, 
>>>> Equation
>>>> >> Editor ~
>>>> >>
>>>> >>
>>>> >>
>>>> >>
>>>> >> On Sun, Mar 15, 2009 at 1:39 PM, <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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>>>
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