[Athen] Math Accessibility for Canvas

[Stager, Catherine]

Hi Allison,
I don't have all of your answers, but the MathJax work done by Volker Sorge is well worth exploring. MathJax uses MathML as its internal format so a screen reader's ability to interact with them is comparable: LaTex is essentially a text-based markup so access to that is created by knowing LaTex, or transforming it into another format such as MathJax or MathML.

Volker has done some excellent Accessing Higher ground presentations where there are files you can interact with
(https://progressiveaccess.com/ahg19/). Using Pandoc (pandoc.org)  you can convert the LaTex to a variety of formats... including MathJax. Pandoc is sweet and painless esp when run from the command line.

I am not sure but I believe that NVDA still needs MathPlayer to read both MathML and MathJax... Chrome has not had native MathML support - MathJax helps Chrome overcome this problem. JAWs and Voiceover both support MathML. When rendered via MathJax, various methods of getting to the code are possible.

Penn State has some good resources at https://accessibility.psu.edu/math/mathml/ .

I might ask the Math profs to consider rendering into ePub rather than PDF.  PDF still does not have any way that I know of to support accessible rendering of math.

Best regards,
Cath

Catherine M. Stager
Assistive Technology Specialist
Catherine.Stager at frontrange.edu<mailto:Catherine.Stager at frontrange.edu>

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From: athen-list <athen-list-bounces at mailman12.u.washington.edu> On Behalf Of Swanson,Allison
Sent: Tuesday, October 19, 2021 10:08 AM
To: athen-list at u.washington.edu
Subject: [Athen] Math Accessibility for Canvas


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Hello Everyone,

I'm working on a process for our math department to make their content accessible both in PDF files (some faculty have written their own textbooks) and in Canvas, including new Canvas quizzes. The instructor I'm working with has written all of his content in LaTex. I have several questions about where to take it from there.

What is the status of screen reader compatibility with LaTex, MathML, MathJax, etc? Do they need to be converting to MathML? Should we be recommending browser / screen reader combinations that work better for math?

Also, regarding the PDFs, will MathML generated by MathType still be accessible once converted to PDF?

This is not for alternative format production, but for faculty-produced content, so needs to be as streamlined as possible. Does anyone already have a good process in place for this?

Thanks,

Allison Swanson
AT-IT Coordinator & Accessibility Facilitator
[Assistive Technology Resource Center Colorado State University]
308 Occupational Therapy Building
970-491-0625
allison.r.swanson at colostate.edu<mailto:allison.r.swanson at colostate.edu>

Assistive Technology Resource Center<atrc.colostate.edu>
Accessibility By Design<https://accessibility.colostate.edu/>

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