Math accessibility is a surprisingly complex subject. How math should be read is dependent on the mathematical or scientific context in which the math is embedded, the educational level of the user, and their familiarity with the accessibility technology itself. In our grant work with the Educational Testing Service (ETS) we found out that a literal reading of a mathematical expression in a test question can give away the answer even when the graphical rendering doesn't.
BTW, all this work is done with math expressed in MathML. It could use MathML structures obtained from MathJax but this means that the screen reader can't use MSAA (or equivalent) to get an IAccessible interface from a DOM node. As far as I know, there is no mechanism that allows JavaScript code to implement IAccessible. Even with MathML implemented natively in browsers, it seems like accessibility mechanisms still need some work. While the HTML5 effort is busy adding access to device features (phone, camera, GPS, touch) for us in web apps, there has been no effort to do something similar for screen readers and for accessibility support in general. Screen reader vendors are currently being cut out of the mobile market as device makers are playing the old proprietary "that functionality is part of the OS" game. I guess I am going a bit far afield here. My hope was to show that there is a lot happening with MathML technology. It is not time to pull the plug but properly support it. _______________________________________________ dev-platform mailing list dev-platform@lists.mozilla.org https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-platform
