From MathML to AT

Current State of MathML Accessibility

Support

• Windows: NVDA(+MathPlayer) and JAWS
• Apple: macOS and iOS (Safari+VoiceOver)
• Linux: Orca

Speech, Braille, Navigation

Example:   $2 \frac{1}{3} \cdot 9 \frac{5}{8} > 22$

Ambiguity of Notation

Many ways to speak an expression

• $(0,5)$ "open paren 0 comma 5 close paren" vs "point 0 comma 5" vs "open interval from 0 to 5" vs "gcd" vs …
• $x'$ – “x prime" vs “first derivative of x” vs "x feet" vs "x minutes"
• $x^2$ – “x squared” vs “x superscript 2 end superscript”
• $\hat{x}$ – “x hat” vs “x modified above with circumflex”

Authors know what they mean

Accessibility Tree

Current State (MathML Accessibility API Mappings 1.0)

• Windows – no mappings
• macOS/iOS – recently add MathML-equivalent roles (attributes?)
• Linux – some math roles
• Android – ???

What should be in the accessibility tree???

Adding Author Intent

• ARIA
• CSS
• Structured Data
• Parallel Markup
• Intent/Subject Area

ARIA

  <math aria-label="the point 0 comma 5">
    <mrow >
      <mo>(</mo>
      <mn class="arg1">0</mn>
      <mo>,</mo>
      <mn class="arg2">5</mn>
      <mo>)</mo>
    </mrow>
  </math>    

Navigation: nested tagging

ARIA: if only...

• Plain text:

  Long A:

  Short A:

• Separate braille code (Nemeth/UEB)
• User-specific text $\frac{1}{x+1}$
• Long text strings

CSS

<mrow data-intent="point">
  <mo>(</mo>
  <mn class="arg1">0</mn>
  <mo>,</mo>
  <mn class="arg2">5</mn>
  <mo>)</mo>
</mrow>

[data-intent="point"] {
 --speech: "the point " text(.arg1) "comma" text(.arg2);
};  

User-stylesheets for user-specific text

Structured data via schema.org RDFa annotations

• Experiment that failed
• Ideas???

Parallel Markup

<semantics>
  <mrow id="x">
    <mo id="x.1">(</mo>
    <mn id="x.2">0</mn>   <mo id="x.3">,</mo>
    <mn id="x.4">5</mn>
    <mo id="x.5">)</mo>
  </mrow>
  <annotation-xml encoding="MathML-Content">
    <apply xref="x">   <csymbol>point</csymbol>
      <cn xref="x.2">0</cn>
      <cn xref="x.4">5</cn>
    </apply>

Parallel Markup (2)

Cons

    </annotation-xml>
    </semantics>

• Complexity
• Even less well used than Content MathML

Pros

• Part of MathML
• csymbol & Wikidata: accessibility + computability

New: @intent

    <mrow intent="point($1,$2)">
      <mo>(</mo>
      <mn arg="1">0</mn>
      <mo>,</mo>
      <mn arg="2">5</mn>
      <mo>)</mo>
    </mrow> 

• Open-ended
• Defaults
• AT generates speech

New: @subject

  <math subject="geometry">
    ...
  <math> 

• Change defaults
• Easy remediation: $ \ce{ -CH =CH -C H2 } $
• Classification is hard