[Blindmath] MathJax Accessibility: math/STEM universal access/design

[David Tseng]

Hi Kevin,

You seem to be misunderstanding the web stack a bit here -- it's complicated :).

MathJax is just a javascript component; nothing less, nothing more. It
"talks" to accessibility user agents through the standard ways that
have been established for years (somewhat indirectly that is). Peeling
away the layers, you have assistive technologies which consume
platform a11y API's exposed by browsers; these map to information
contained in the browser DOM; these, in turn, ultimately, contain the
structures and content specified by an author in html/js/css and other
web technologies.

The way in which mathjax holds potential IMO (as someone who has given
it's sources a cursory glance), is to render LaTeX or MathML into
HTML/JS/CSS which has the following features (not by any means
complete, but what I came up with in ten minutes):
- keyboard handlers
- text fields or some other html element containing semantically
significant partitions of an expression
- aria live regions which fire in reaction to movement through an expression.
- html tables that present grid like expressions i.e. matrices.

Since MathJax sits within the browser somewhere in between the content
author/browser DOM and the end mapping to platform API's, there's
potential to "mutate" the DOM before it reaches the platform a11y
API's in interesting ways to cause the screen readers in consideration
to do the "right" thing. This could be to just do a simple textual
dump as other tools do now or to present the content in "usual" html
structures (lists, tables, headings, etc) that people are familiar
with now, or use application mode with a mix of custom focus handling.

In this way, a screen reader will be "passively" convinced to work
with the underlying content. Input through the keyboard will guide the
reader through the expression with output given through speech.

I'm planning on tackling this in my spare time once I chat with some
project folks and get a proof of concept ready.

It's not really a question of advocacy at this point; it's a question
of getting engineering resources and time. Keep in mind also that this
is an open source project (i.e. it's on a volunteer basis). If there
are others you know of who would like to hack on this, I'd love to
organize the discussion.

- David

On 11/6/11, Kevin Chao <kevinchao89 at gmail.com> wrote:
> MathJax is an open source JavaScript display engine for mathematics
> that works in all modern browsers.
> No more setup for readers. No more browser plugins. No more font
> installations… It just works.
> Accept following sources:
> LaTeX
> MathML
>
> http://www.mathjax.org/
>
> Unfortunately, there's not an MathJax accessibility API, which web
> browsers can use, which will allow assistive technologies, such as
> screen readers to work with beautiful math in all browsers. As far as
> I'm aware, there's no MathJax accessibility in Windows IE9/8, Chrome
> 15-17, Firefox 4-10; Mac OS X Safari, Webkit, Lightning, and/or
> Chrome; iOS 5 Safari; Android Mobile Acccessibility Web browser or
> Ideal Web Reader.
>
> MathJax has the potential to make math/STEM accessibility truly
> universal and not speicific to MathML and IE8, MathPlayer, and JAWS
> 12.
>
> It has the potential to completely revolutionize math/STEM
> accessibility for all, but I would like to know what's the best
> approach in MathJax including universal access/design, and it working
> for all? Perhaps, it should be a community effort, where we all
> contact MathJax, create a petition, or some other campaign effort?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Kevin
>
> _______________________________________________
> Blindmath mailing list
> Blindmath at nfbnet.org
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/blindmath_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
> Blindmath:
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/blindmath_nfbnet.org/davidct1209%40gmail.com
>