[Using Sakai] [Building Sakai] [WG: Accessibility] Fwd: fMath or MathJax? Why I'm thinking MathJax...

Mon Jul 8 08:36:49 PDT 2013

I think if a school really needed accessibility I think they'd have to go
with the commercial Wiris plugin. Prior to 2.9 this was the best/only
option for math in Sakai. This plugin still creates images with the
data-mathml tag, but it also has an English and screen reader readable alt
tag on the image. FMath doesn't generate this alt tag.

I have absolutely no knowledge of what screen readers can parse/read but
perhaps there is a way for them to read the data-mathml tags. Or maybe
FMath can produce the XHTML and hide it. Or maybe there's a client or
server-side module that can convert MathML to a English readable alt tag.
Or maybe there's a better open source WYSIWYG than FMath? It sounds like
all of these options could be expensive and so far the amount of effort put
into supporting math in Sakai over the last 4 years has been extremely
minimal.

I still don't think straight MathML is a good idea yet. Even though it is a
WC3 standard, it is still only supported natively in Firefox. Chrome turned
it off as of version 25 [1] (I believe still off) for security and it never
worked in IE. Therefore it needs MathJax to render, which as Matt Clare
said requires scanning the entire document looking for math. Even then
Sakai doesn't allow the tags yet through ProcessFormattedText in any
released version of Sakai. It also wouldn't render in the WYSIWYG mode of
CKEditor through MathJax, you'd see the markup rather than the equation
(until more browsers supported native rendering).

[1] https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=174455

On Mon, Jul 8, 2013 at 10:43 AM, Mark J. Norton
<markjnorton at earthlink.net>wrote:

> MathML is a WC3 extension to HTML5.  As such, it is likely to get a lot
> of attention from screen readers now and going forward, since it is the
> emerging standard.  LaTeX has some advantages, being the Math
> description language used by Moodle, for example, but I think it's a bit
> dated at this point.
>
>  >  Math and scientific notation is a real frontier of web accessibility
> right now, and tough problem to solve* on and off-line.
>
> Hardly a new area of research.  Accessibility support for mathematics
> has been around longer than the web.  There is, for example, an
> extension to Braille for math.  Still, it is a challenge, as Matt mentions.
>
> Lack of support for screen readers is a big red mark against any CLE
> math plugin, IMO.
>
> - mark
>
> On 7/8/2013 10:25 AM, Neal Caidin wrote:
> > [Looping back in sakai-dev and sakai-user ]
> >
> > See below for comments on fMath and MathJax wrt Accessibility and
> performance.
> >
> > -- Neal
> >
> >
> > On Jul 8, 2013, at 9:18 AM, Matt Clare <Matt.Clare at BrockU.CA> wrote:
> >
> >> Hi all,
> >>
> >>      MathJax is a display library with a very good reputation,
> especially around accessibility.  MathJax's implementation allows users of
> a screen reader to navigate through a formula.
> >>
> >>      If Samigo adopts MathJax it gets a great math and scientific
> notation display tool.  If Samigo drops fMath it loses a math editor.
> >>
> >>      My colleague Michael Brousseau (CC'd) is the feature requester for
> MathJax being implemented across the CLE and we've been experimenting with
> implementing it locally https://jira.sakaiproject.org/browse/SAK-22384via a site theme.
> >>
> >>      MathJax's biggest limitation is it needs to parse the whole page
> for either MathML or LaTeX on every page load.  This is why we are adding
> it to an optional site theme, not just across the whole system.  Adding it
> to Samigo would be very welcome from our perspective.
> >>
> >>      fMath is both a way to display math formulas and an editor for
> input.  We don't use it locally and have simply assumed that instructors
> would prefer to author equations in more sophisticated tools and copy the
> MathML or LaTeX output into Samigo.  The second assumption we've made is
> that JavaScript is preferable over Flash in almost all cases.
> >>
> >>      It can't definitively speak to the screen reader support of fMath,
> but it does not work with the NVDA reader.  fMath's copying and zooming
> features would be a pragmatic way to make the tool *more* accessible to
> those poorly sighted, but not to those with no sight or those that need the
> reader for cognitive reasons.
> >>
> >>      Math and scientific notation is a real frontier of web
> accessibility right now, and tough problem to solve* on and off-line.
> >>
> >>      I'll add for context, MathML is much more like HTML and is
> supported natively by Firefox and generally by the Mozilla foundation, but
> IE requires a plugin and the other browsers ignore it.  LaTeX was here
> first, and often favoured by those working since and math  (that aren't
> also web devs) because of its ubiquity.  MathML has merit, LaTex is hard to
> dethrone.
> >>
> >>      Those are our assumptions and experiences,
> >>
> >>      .\.\att
> >>
> >>
> >> * Pun intended, but not that funny.
> >>
> >>
> >> ::  Matt Clare
> >> Manager, eLearning
> >> Centre for Pedagogical Innovation
> >> Part-time Instructor
> >> Interactive Arts and Sciences
> >> Brock University, Niagara Region, Ontario, Canada
> >> http://brocku.ca/pedagogical-innovation    905 688 5550 xt 4539
> Office: SBH321
> >>
> >> Isaak/Sakai Question? Contact edtech at brocku.ca or visit
> http://kumu.brocku.ca/sakai/FAQ
> >>
> >> On 2013-07-08, at 7:48 AM, Neal Caidin <neal.caidin at apereo.org>
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >>> Hi Accessibility group,
> >>>
> >>> Is anyone familiar with Accessibility friendliness of fMath (currently
> in Sakai CLE 2.9) and MathJax (being considered by the Samigo team)?
> >>>
> >>> Thanks,
> >>> Neal Caidin
> >>>
> >>> Sakai CLE Community Coordinator
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Begin forwarded message:
> >>>
> >>>> From: "Mark J. Norton" <markjnorton at earthlink.net>
> >>>> Subject: Re: [Using Sakai] fMath or MathJax? Why I'm thinking
> MathJax...
> >>>> Date: July 8, 2013 7:39:10 AM EDT
> >>>> To: sakai-user at collab.sakaiproject.org
> >>>>
> >>>> On 7/5/2013 4:16 PM, Keli Sato Amann wrote:
> >>>>> fMath is a Flash plug-in for CKEditor. It brings up a WYSIWYG editor
> that lets you create an image of your equation
> >>>> I wonder how accessible this is.  Modern screen readers have support
> for
> >>>> reading MathML expressions, but they have a hard time with images,
> >>>> unless the alt text was VERY detailed.
> >>>>
> >>>> - Mark
> >>>>
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