[BlindMath] Accessibility of MS Word-Based Math ML of Bookshare Material

[Bhavya shah]

Dear all,

I was recently comparing the readibility of mathematical and
scientific content of a Bookshare-published Chemistry textbook in
different formats. When viewing the book via the Bookshare web reader,
all calculations and equations were rendered in Math ML, recognized by
Math Player 4,  and picked up and verbalized by NVDA 2018.3, all on
Mozilla Firefox. However, when I downloaded the same book from
Bookshare in the Word format, and opened the Word file for that
textbook on my computer using MS Word 2016, and failed to properly
read those very same reactions and equations, which were being
displayed instead as plain text in bits and pieces, somewhat
resemblingg what NVDA should have actually read that Math ML as.

There are two potential explanations that come to my mind for the
cause of this discrepancy:
* Bookshare has issues in its conversion and packaging of mathematical
and scientiffic content-containing textbooks into Word files (and not
whilst rendering it using the Bookshare web reader)
* Math Player is giving me trouble since contrary to the Math Player
User Manual, I do not see any Math Player tab in the Word ribbon/menu
which raises suspicion (less likely because I am able to read Math ML
content elsewhere, such as on the web and in one other Word document,
probably thanks to the functionality of Math Player)

I would appreciate any comments or insights you may have on the cause
and subsequently the remedy for the above described problems that I am
facing, particularly on your own personal experiences about the
accessibility of mathematical and scientific material downloaded from
Bookshare in the Word format.

Thanks.

-- 
Best Regards
Bhavya Shah

Blogger at Hiking Across Horizons: https://bhavyashah125.wordpress.com/

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