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phetsims / a11y-research

a repository to track PhETs research into accessibility, or "a11y" for short
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How will we make make math content accessible? #106

Open terracoda opened 6 years ago

terracoda commented 6 years ago

I am starting a broader issue on Accessible Math where we can gather questions, working solutions, tools and research that we come across as we start to dive into sims that contain math content.

@jonathanolson is doing some testing with MathML. There are questions about the scientific notation in Coulomb's Law and Gravity Force Lab: Basics see https://github.com/phetsims/a11y-research/issues/105.

I’m not sure when we are going to dive into math accessibility and do a literature review or find existing tools that might work across all browsers. I think everyone is aware that Chrome does not support MathML, so it may not be our long term solution.

The top 2 math experts in accessible math that I am aware of are TV Raman and Volker Sorge. Both have done extensive work in making Math accessible. TVRaman on EmacsSpeaks and Volker Sorge on MathJax.

Gathering a few Resources, Tools, and Reading

Everyone, please add to the list if you find something of interest!!

@jonathanolson, could share your progress (or questions/issues) with MathML in this issue? I am assigning to you for now.

jonathanolson commented 6 years ago

Current MathML results are noted in https://github.com/phetsims/QA/issues/121.

jonathanolson commented 6 years ago

Additionally, we'll probably want to review the testing done in https://github.com/phetsims/QA/issues/121, since it seems NVDA may be an issue for using MathML. I'll definitely be interested in the proper solution for this.

jessegreenberg commented 6 years ago

@jonathanolson I have heard you mention that it is difficult to integrate MathJax into scenery, can you please summarize the difficulties?

jonathanolson commented 6 years ago

@jonathanolson I have heard you mention that it is difficult to integrate MathJax into scenery, can you please summarize the difficulties?

It has a very hard-coded "startup and load external resources" style. It depends on external CSS/etc. files, including dynamically loading images, fonts, etc. depending on what is needed and what the given platform is. See https://github.com/phetsims/scenery/issues/457

It would take a lot of work (40-80 hours?) to fully patch MathJax so that it could be included in a sim, and more time to figure out how each sim would specify the subset of "dynamically loaded files" that we'd have to data-URL-include in the built file. It would potentially add a large amount of file size to sims that use it (could double/triple), and it would include a lot of maintenance costs.

If we'd just want to "use it" for accessibility, I think the better approach would be to look into what they do for a11y and how the do it. If it uses a library just for that, then maybe there's something we could use directly.

jessegreenberg commented 6 years ago

Thanks, that is very helpful.

terracoda commented 6 years ago

@jonathanolson, yes thanks, that is very helpful information!

jessegreenberg commented 6 years ago

@terracoda I saw you added the meeting label, would you like to discuss this at an upcoming a11y meeting?

terracoda commented 6 years ago

@jessegreenberg, the meeting label was added 3 weeks ago. We had the FYI meeting. I think we will explore this further as we move forward with math sims. I'll label this onhold for now?

Please change label if not appropriate.

terracoda commented 6 years ago

Oops only meant to put onhold, not close.

jessegreenberg commented 6 years ago

Sounds good, thanks!

emily-phet commented 5 years ago

Adding some resources from Paul at Mind Research Institute:

Some very simple test cases for MathML and its alternatives, with and without MathJax. Mostly just to test speech and braille output: http://superkeen.com/web/mathmltest/

Test cases for MathML embedded within other HTML elements: http://superkeen.com/web/mathmltest/mathmlfocus.html

Related Orca MathML issue: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/orca/issues/26

Pixis JS’s accessibility feature with debugging on, for easy inspection: http://superkeen.com/web/pixi/index-debug.html

Same thing but with the production settings: http://superkeen.com/web/pixi/

Related Pixi improvements: https://github.com/pixijs/pixi.js/pull/4435