[BlindMath] JAWS appears to have broken electronic math accessibility

Wed Jun 9 17:54:36 UTC 2021

Hi, Rastislav-

The MathSpeak Grammar examples I provided are the "Verbose" option. More
terse and compact options of MathSpeak grammar and the other conventional
grammars are available, thus my concern over the lack of configuration
options.I provided the verbose versions to describe in text that the
equations are distinct from each other even if JAWS announces them the
same. The verbose grammar is easier to read for those not used to hearing
math.

Many screen-reader users (our students) need to consume a high volume of
math content and listen to math inline with their readings without taking
the time to explore each bit of math in tree view. Why should JAWS speak
the math at all if not to speak it accurately and unambiguously? As a
comparison, NVDA does a fine job of reading inline math unambiguously in
these contexts. A reader should not have to interact with each bit of math
to see if perhaps JAWS didn't read it accurately to them. Some math texts
have 100s of math objects on a given page. Checking out 100s of math
objects in tree view is not practical either.

JAWS should have the configuration option to allow choosing the desired
verbosity level, and not provide ambiguous renderings by default.

Besides those issues, the missing plus operators and completely not
announcing math in some cases (like at the start of a list item) are huge
issues. I could add even more bugs to their github site, but I don't want
to do their QA for them.

-Brian

On Wed, Jun 9, 2021 at 1:26 PM Rastislav Kish via BlindMath <
blindmath at nfbnet.org> wrote:

> Hey there,
>
> hmm, I did not use Jaws seriously for more than year, so I don't quite
> remember the details, but wasn't this always the way Jaws shaped its
> MathML presentation engine?
>
> I mean, the function was added in Jaws 17? Or 16? Not sure right now,
> but I have feeling it was always like this. May be except for brackets,
> here I'm not really sure, but I think the rest did not change, feel free
> to correct me if I'm wrong.
>
>
> i personally like the Jaws approach. I don't know MathSpeak or this Dr.
> Nemeth, but when I'm reading your examples of how it's supposed to
> sound, I feel like it would be one of those tools I'd throw out of
> window under the first circumstance. :)
>
> Like, it's really nice to have formally correct language, but what's
> really the point if it makes things hard to read?
>
> Unpractical technology is almost like no technology at all.
>
> In your examples, most of the time i hear that something starts or ends,
> with the really relevant information being overwhelmed by this
> positional stuff.
>
> Not even speaking about the lenght of the resulting message.
>
>
> On the other hand, with the Jaws approach, I can focus on the relevant
> parts without being disturbed by details. Like yes, these details are
> pretty important, but I'm going to check out the formula in tree mode
> anyway, so what's not spoken will be revealed sooner or later.
>
> And as long as I know the layout, I no longer need to hear it, my brain
> automatically maps relevant parts to their appropriate positions.
>
>
> In other words, at least in my opinion, speaking math notation should be
> about... well... speaking it, like you'd normally read it to a sighted
> audience, not about data serialization.
>
> Serialization is for computers, speech is for humans.
>
>
> But thanks anyway for sharing. I'm working on math accessibility for
> Linux, and i should definitely give this a second thought.
>
>
> Best regards
>
>
> Rastislav
>
>
> Dňa 9. 6. 2021 o 17:45 Brian Richwine via BlindMath napísal(a):
> > Hi,
> >
> > Does anyone have any insight into what Freedom Scientific is doing in
> > developing MathML support in JAWS?
> >
> > It used to be that we could create accessible HTML math content using
> > MathJax and have it reliably spoken accurately and unambiguously by
> > screen-reading software. However, JAWS and its apparently flawed MathML
> > support have made accessible electronic math unreliable and thus
> unusable.
> >
> > The default MathJax settings add visually hidden MathML into the page for
> > AT that can read it (not the speech text that MathJax can provide). So,
> now
> > that JAWS “speaks” MathML JAWS users end up getting the speech text that
> > JAWS generates instead of what MathJax generates. Unfortunately, it
> appears
> > that the speech text for MathML generated by JAWS is very flawed and is
> > incapable of accurately and unambiguously speaking even basic algebraic
> > constructions.
> >
> > The following link contains pairs of simple distinct MathML equations as
> > examples of basic math that JAWS does not read unambiguously (sighted
> users
> > can view it in Firefox to see the MathML rendered):
> >
> https://brichwin.pages.iu.edu/tests/jaws_Reading_MathML_ambiguously-2021-06-07.html
> > I have included the JAWS speech history and the MathSpeak Grammar verbose
> > speech text generated by MathJax for each example. You will notice that
> > JAWS fails to read basic mathematical relationships distinctly
> > (unambiguously) whereas MathJax does generate unambiguous and accurate
> > speech text.
> >
> > We have filed several issues on the Freedom Scientific / Vispero
> Standards
> > Support github:
> >
> > ·         JAWS is not reading MathML in a clear, unambiguous manner:
> > https://github.com/FreedomScientific/VFO-standards-support/issues/539
> >
> > ·         JAWS No Longer Announcing the Plus Operator when reading MathML
> > with Verbosity of Punctuation=None:
> > https://github.com/FreedomScientific/VFO-standards-support/issues/538
> >
> > ·         MathML equations at beginning of list items are not read
> > correctly:
> > https://github.com/FreedomScientific/VFO-standards-support/issues/503
> >
> > I am concerned because:
> >
> > ·         Non-visual users will not know that JAWS is incorrectly
> speaking
> > mathematics.
> >
> > ·         People believe putting MathJax, KaTeX, or straight MathML on an
> > HTML page makes the mathematics accessible.
> >
> > o   Increasingly electronic mathematics content is being created and
> relied
> > upon. Especially in the education arena.  Students will be disadvantaged.
> >
> > o   I am beginning to hear people blaming MathJax for the JAWS failings.
> >
> > ·         JAWS appears to render its own flavor of speech text vs. using
> an
> > established mature and common grammar (Mathspeak, Clearspeak, etc.). If
> > this is the case, the different speech rendering could confuse listeners
> > and add unnecessary cognitive burden as a barrier to comprehension and
> > learning.
> >
> > ·         I cannot find any JAWS settings to disable or otherwise
> configure
> > the JAWS MathML support. Typical configuration options would include
> > selecting a speech grammar, the grammar’s verbosity level, explicivity,
> > semantic interpretation, etc.
> >
> > Does anyone know how to disable the JAWS MathML support? It would be
> great
> > if we could turn it off until they make it reliable. Can we get Freedom
> > Scientific / Vispero to treat MathSupport as a beta feature that is off
> by
> > default until it is robust enough not to disadvantage non-visual users?
> >
> > Very interested to hear the thoughts of others!
> >
> >     Brian
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