[BlindMath] Assistance with accessibility in Math programs

[Łukasz Grabowski]

Dear Melissa,

I think the most important thing is that the people at your maths
department should be made aware that they ight need to change some of
their ways (i.e. the workflows which they use), as it's simply not the
case that every single end product can be made accessible when no
thought was put into accessibility during the preparation stage.

Havving said that few quick thoughts:
1) the vector fields which you attached could be suitable for a tactile
graphic. Make the arrows 2-5 times sparser and it should be ok (easy
to do for whoever preapred them in the first place).

2) the tables used in problems is a silly nuissance - just speak with
whoever uses them and think together about another way of presenting
the content. There's obviously nothing there which necessitates using
any particular software solution, it could be just as well presented to
a student as a simple text file with no loss of educational value.

3) 3D plots require much more careful thought. There's certainly no
automatic way. The lecturer has to think and tell you what is important
in a given plot. For example I take it that in the middle plot the only
two important things are that a) the function has two maxima, and b)
there is a saddle point between them. All the other details of the
picture are most likely completely irrelevant. As such in this case you
can even prepare the graph out of clay etc. - as long as it's about
conveying general concepts (minima, maxima, stationary points), simple
models should easily convey the meaning and help the student to
internalise those concepts.

4) video and image in assessment - well obviously this has to be
redesigned depending on specific details of what they are used for..

Best,
Lukasz

On Wed, 6 Jun 2018 15:05:05 -0700
Melissa Verschage via BlindMath <blindmath at nfbnet.org> wrote:

> Hello.
> 
> I am new to this group. I was referred to the group during the recent
> AHEAD accessibility conference in late May.
> 
> My campus is creating accessibility standards for online courses. We
> are working with our Math department to determine what steps they
> need to take to make their courses and course materials accessible.
> Is anyone working on accessibility standards related to math
> content/courses/programs? I have a couple of challenges we are trying
> to address and would love some input from anyone who has gone through
> any accessibility steps. A few topics of concern include:
> 
> *Tables used for problems*
> Tables are used for data, but this one has cells to use for answers.
> 
> ​
> 
> *3D Modeling Plots*
> These are used in calculus and are very visual in nature. Some of
> these are very difficult to describe. Has anyone dealt with this?
> 
> 
> *Vector Fields*
> More visual graphs that are difficult to describe. Has anyone dealt
> with these?
> 
> 
> Video or Images in Assessments
> There are some assessments that show a video of a graph building or an
> image of a graph. Students are to identify what is happening or what
> it represents so providing audio descriptions or alt text defeats the
> purpose of the assessment. Has anyone encountered this situation? Any
> insights you can share?
> ​
> ​I have a few additional  items that I need to address. Please reach
> out to me if you have any insight on these items or if you are
> interested in collaborating on any of them.
> 
> I appreciate any help I can get.
> 
> Kindest regards,
> Melissa
> 
>