[Blindmath] mathplayer, jaws, and math in graphics?

[Andrew Stacey]

On Sun, Apr 03, 2011 at 03:08:22PM -0500, Kevin Chao wrote:
> Hi Dr. Stacey,
> 
> I very much  appreciate the clarification on roles of MathML and LaTeX.
> If I may, I have a few more questions.
> * MathML output is only accessible with MathPlayer, which works with
> Internet Explorer and JAWS. Is that correct? So, there's nothing for
> Firefox or NVDA?

I'm a sighted mathematician with an interest in making mathematics accessible,
both for personal and professional reasons.  For a longer explanation of my
reasons for being here, search through the archives for my first post.  In
brief, my son has less than perfect sight which has made me more aware of
issues regarding people with partial sight using computers, and as
a mathematician I firmly believe that mathematics can be applied and be
helpful in every walk of life and so it should be accessible to anyone.

But as I'm sighted, I don't know much about the actual technologies involved.
As I just said in a different email, there's two sides to this: pragmatism and
idealism.  Being pragmatic may mean using IE and MathPlayer, whilst being
idealistic means sending emails to Firefox and other browsers complaining
loudly about their accessibility support.

(In comparison, of the major browsers, only Firefox is reliable when it comes
to viewing MathML so users of Safari, IE, Camino, Opera, and so forth keep
emailing them to complain and slowly progress is made.)

> * What are commonly  used converters for LaTeX, which will get it
> processed into a suitable format to be read?

LaTeX input is converted by the TeX program into a rendered output.  Usually,
now, this is PDF (sadly not tagged PDF).  It can be converted to XHTML+MathML
by using a wrapper called TeX4HT which puts some "hooks" in to the output that
can then be read to converted to XHTML+MathML.

There is no "formal grammar" for LaTeX.  The "formal grammar" for TeX (on
which LaTeX is built) is "whatever the tex program will accept".  So the only
true converter for LaTeX is the latex program.  However, there are many
programs that convert a subset of or a simplified version of LaTeX to HTML.

> I'm very interested in examples of MathML and LaTeX output.

I'm not sure what you mean by "LaTeX output".  As I said above, the usual
format for LaTeX is PDF.  There are many such available on the internet, but
I don't know how accessible they would be.  If you want examples of MathML,
then there are plenty on the website http://ncatlab.org which is
a collaborative mathematical site.  However, it's research-level so I'm
hesitant at recommending it!

Andrew