[Blindmath] No to Accessible LaTeX

[Alastair Irving]

Susan, and others

Being an international standard is, in my opinion, not sufficient 
justification for using something.  I apreciate the work that's been 
done on making MathMl accessible but the usefulness of this work is very 
much dependent on how prevalent MathMl usage actually is.  In my 
experience, the amount of maths available in MathML is tiny compared to 
the amount that's available in some variant of LaTeX, (including HTML 
with LaTeX alt tags for images).

I am in my 4th year of a mathematics degree, and in that time none of my 
lecturues have used MathMl to produce materials, and neither have any of 
the authors I've contacted about getting accessible copies of their books.

I know that you can convert LaTeX documents into MathMl, but this seems 
pointless when LaTeX itself is accessible and with complex documents 
there's probably going to be some level of inaccuracy introduced by the 
conversion process.

Finally, even with the current state of MathMl accessibility I prefer 
accessing webpages with LaTeX alt-tags than pages with MathMl, primarily 
because, as far as I'm aware there's no way of getting realtime braille 
support for MathMl equations.

Best wishes

Alastair Irving

Susan Jolly wrote:
> LaTeX source is not a viable longterm solution for accessibility if for no 
> other reason as it is not an international standard whereas MathML is.  And, 
> by the way, sighted people do not read unrendered LaTeX source except for 
> proofing something they've written themselves.
> 
> There are two possible solutions for making math accessible on the web. One 
> is speech-based and the other is braille-based.
> 
> There are a growing number of TTS applications that convert MathML to speech 
> in real time. Whether or not you personally use spoken math, this 
> development is certainly a positive argument for the use of MathML as the 
> basis for math on the Web.
> 
> Now to braille-based solutions.  Here there are many different 
> possibilities.  One set of possibilities is based on the use of an ASCII 
> math entry system: either one of the many flavors of LaTeX or some unrelated 
> system  such as ASCIIMathML: 
> http://www1.chapman.edu/~jipsen/mathml/asciimath.html  The other set of 
> possibilities is based on the use of some standard braille system such as 
> Nemeth.
> 
> For the benefit of those not familiar with refreshable braille let me pause 
> to explain how braille readers read ASCII math. There are 94 different ASCII 
> characters including the 52 small and capital Latin letters.  There are only 
> 63 six-dot braille cells so obviously there cannot be a one-for-one mapping 
> of ASCII characters to six-dot braille or standard embossed braille. 
> However, refreshable braille displays support eight-dot braille which 
> provides for more than 94 possible braille cells. Braille displays show the 
> ASCII characters using a mapping generally referred to as a computer braille 
> table.  Different braille displays use different tables although they are 
> generally similar. Commonly a seventh dot (at the bottom left of a braille 
> cell) is used to distinguish the capital letters from the small ones and to 
> distinguish five other ASCII characters.
> 
> I am not a braille reader but my understanding is that some braille readers 
> are facile readers of  eight-dot computer braille and some aren't.
> 
> So there are thus a number of problems with using an ASCII math system to 
> support braille-based accessibility. One is that these systems are 
> inconsistent with the positive developments as far as MathML-based spoken 
> math. A second reason is that none of these systems are what braille users 
> first learn so there has to be relearning. The third is that it requires 
> eight-dot braille which is not universally acceptable. Finally, there are 
> dozens of ASCII math systems and it seems unlikely at this point that one of 
> them would emerge as a standard solution for accessibility.
> 
> The big advantage is, of course, that ASCII math doesn't require further 
> conversion in order to be displayed. Many braille readers have, of course, 
> learned to decode some flavor of LaTeX on the basis that any accessibility 
> is better than none. But since sighted people require electronic math to be 
> rendered in order to be readable, it seems that true accessibility would 
> entail rendering as well.
> 
> There are a growing number of applications designed to support realtime 
> conversion from MathML to one or more of the standard braille math systems. 
> However, if you prefer one of the ASCII maths, it is certainly possible to 
> generate one of them from MathML as well.
> 
> Sincerely,
> SusanJ
> 
> 
> 
> .
> 
> 
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