[Blindmath] Why I favor MathML

[Michael Whapples]

Hello Susan,
I think you may partly have hit on what appears to be my change of heart 
about LaTeX and mathml. At one time I probably would have said use 
LaTeX, but may be after some of my experiences with other peoples' LaTeX 
source (there was certainly one document I had at university which due 
to all the style files, macros, etc it was quite difficult to follow 
straight off and it wasn't just me saying that my tutor also said it was 
horrible to read the source (she normally wrote papers in LaTeX, so I 
consider her someone fairly experienced with LaTeX) and we also had to 
get the document entirely rewritten for use with duxbury (there was no 
point trying to unpick it and edit it to something suitable, that might 
have taken just as long)). So while LaTeX is something useful to know 
(basics inparticular as this will help with those image equations with 
LaTeX alt-tags), I feel we should also look to the future and what can be.

As Susan has said in the past, rendered maths should be what we should 
look for, sighted people prefer maths in print math notation, why 
shouldn't we have it spoken or in Braille? (choose speech or Braille, 
which ever comes most naturally)

I don't know whether it is what Susan meant about mathml being an 
international standard but here are a couple of how it is an 
international standard. As I understand it there are a number of 
variations of LaTeX and so two different people may do the same maths 
differently. One problem is that sometimes certain documents won't work 
with some compilers (that LaTeX document I mentioned earlier which was 
awful to read the source, well it only compiled with certain tools, I 
was warned about it when I was sent it and sure enough it did fail to 
compile on anything but the compiler specified). Another way mathml is 
international is that nobody reads the source, so the speech output 
produced by mathplayer could potentially insert the French for 
"fraction" at the beginning of the fraction. If we compare this to 
reading LaTeX source where the command names are based on English names 
(eg. \frac fraction, \ne not equal, \section section, etc) then for 
those who don't speak English (or don't speak it as a first language) 
may not find the command names so obvious (I think someone has mentioned 
this to me before).

Anyway coming back to the direct response as this message seems to have 
started to respond to the general discussion, I have started talking 
with some at mozilla about may be trying to add mathml accessibility in 
firefox. Hopefully I will be able to encourage some there to do some 
work on it (I do intend to help with what I can if others are wanting to 
help).

Michael Whapples
PS. (I know PS in an email seems nonsense as they can be edited but I 
couldn't find another place to put this into the message now it is complete)
I feel we may be in a bit of a loop: Little mathml content exists, blind 
people say no content no tools for mathml why use it when we have LaTeX, 
access technology providers find blind people not calling for mathml 
support so don't produce tools, authors find blind people saying no 
tools which use the accessibility of mathml so feel there is no 
accessibility argument to make the switch so stick with what they are 
using, and so on... I feel unless someone in this loop looks to the 
future then we will be stuck with what we have and while may be LaTeX 
can be used I say its far from perfect.
On 06/11/09 19:37, Susan Jolly wrote:
> 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
>
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