[Building Sakai] FW: Equations (and charts) in FCK

[Tom Hall]

HI Brian

A very interesting and, unfortunately, difficult issue to resolve. I 
have low vision and make use of some of the software available for 
accessibility, but math and many special symbols are an issue. I 
recently attended a conference in Toronto at which two students 
presented their research work on math-to-speech and work problem to 
equation conversions. There are a lot of very complex issues involved as 
you are well aware. I will get the references for these papers tonight 
and send them to you tomorrow.

In addition to Sakai, we also use WebWork (http://webwork.maa.org) an 
web-based math/science homework/testing tool. This also suffers from 
significant accessibility issues. LaTeX is used to generate much of the 
output from this system, so I am not sure that LaTeX will provide you 
with much help.

Tom

Richwine, Brian L wrote:
>
> Over the last few semesters at the ATC, we’ve had to put more and more 
> energy into make math accessible for our students. We’ve been 
> disappointed over the state of accessibility solutions for 
> mathematics, and what we see as the lack of a commonly recognized 
> somewhat universal and workable solution.
>
> The email I am forwarding (below) come from the Building Sakai email list and reminds me to think creating accessible math in Sakai’s context. I’ve mused on it a bit, and read through recommendations such as the Mathematics section in the IMS Guidelines for Developing Accessible Learning Applications (http://ncam.wgbh.org/salt/guidelines/sec11.html#sec11_1), but nothing jumps out. 
>  
> Obviously, it would be great if Sakai users can create accessible content using Sakai. Does anyone have any experience with working solutions, or have suggestions on how content including accessible math could be created in Sakai?
>  
> I haven’t seen any examples of accessible equation/expression editors on the web. Manually typing in MathML is rather labor intensive. Given the process outlined in the forwarded email below, I’d be tempted to suggest the LaTex could also be ran through a LaTex-to-Audio processor like AsTer (http://www.cs.cornell.edu/Info/People/raman/phd-thesis/html/root-thesis.html) and a link to the created audio file posted along with the image. But, we’ve had terribly inconsistent and erratic results with the Braille translation systems we’ve tried that claimed to convert LaTex to Nemeth code – and the LaTex code wasn’t generated by hand, but from the MathType editor!
>  
> -Brian
>  
>
> Brian Richwine**
>
> Adaptive Technology Support Specialist**
>
> Adaptive Technology and Accessibility Centers**
>
> Indiana University - Bloomington/Indianapolis**
>
> http://iuadapts.indiana.edu**
>
> (812) 856-4112**
>
>  
>
> *From:* sakai-dev-bounces at collab.sakaiproject.org 
> [mailto:sakai-dev-bounces at collab.sakaiproject.org] *On Behalf Of 
> *Algaze, Louis J
> *Sent:* Monday, November 16, 2009 3:45 PM
> *To:* Sakai Server
> *Subject:* [Building Sakai] Equations (and charts) in FCK
>
> We have been working on getting equations into Sakai and have come up 
> with the following solution:
>
> Phase 1:
> Use Google Services to convert Tex to an image which uses an 
> undocumented feature of Google charts, also in use by Google docs.
> Put the following code into the source of the FCK area <img 
> src="http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=tx&chl=Tex 
> <http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=tx&chl=Tex> goes here">.
> An example is: <img 
> src="http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=tx&chl=f_p 
> <http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=tx&chl=f_p> = 3\sqrt {area} = 
> 3\sqrt {2 \times 10^6 } = 53800Hz;\;53.8kHz">
> Please review Google usage policy at http://code.google.com/apis/chart/
> Additional variables available per the Google Chart specs
>
> Phase 2:
> Develop a caching system that will, when called (URL change above) 
> will get the image from Google, store it locally and then deliver if 
> it’s already cached reducing the number of hits to Google.
>
> Phase 3:
> Put a button in the FCK editor that allows easy input of Tex, 
> something that takes care of the code around the Tex, and maybe some 
> basic Tex creation.
>
> Phase 4:
> Replace Google with our own Tex to image conversion application.
>
> limitations discovered so far:
>
>     * Equations have a maximum length and spaces in TeX are not necessary
>     * Images are not https therefore some browsers display a warning,
>       we might be able to change that in Phase 2
>     * “+” is not rendered correctly, use %2B
>     * Code to include in img link to make image background transparent
>       is chf=bg,s,FFFFFF00
>
>
> We are in development of this solution and are confident that all 4 
> steps can be implemented. We are also open to feedback to see how 
> others have put equations in Sakai.
>
> Thank you,
>
> Louis
>
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