[Blindmath] Why I favor MathML

[Susan Jolly]

Alistair and others,

I certain appreciate that persons can be in a situation where they have to 
make do with what is available but that doesn't mean that is the best of all 
possible solutions. I'm not arguing against individuals finding solutions 
that work for them now.  My concern is what is the best strategy for us to 
ensure ubiquitous accessible braille math 10 years from now.

Despite what may be happening in academia, publishers of technical material 
are moving toward MathML and, possibly, other non-LaTeX solutions. There are 
commercial solutions to converting from LaTeX to MathML that are error-free. 
There are good renderers for MathML.

In any case, we need more open source software designers and developers to 
get interested in this problem. If everyone on this list could interest just 
one software person currently unfamiliar with the issues of math 
accessibility to learn about it, we might get there faster.  Clearly not 
enough people are working on it now or we wouldn't still be having the same 
problems we had when I first got involved over eight years ago.

Sincerely,
SusanJ