Re: [orca-list] Orca and maths

[Janina Sajka <janina rednote net>]

We have a new work group in Open A11y that is currently developing
requirements and use cases for a possible eventual standard on how to
interface assistive technologies to expert plugins for proper handling
of domain specific markup. In other words, how to handle something like
MathML, for example. This may be a more global approach than you have in
mind, but the work effort has come to us from an expert in this area who
has, fundamentally speaking, gotten tired of customizing the interface
for each particular assistive technology. I'vee cc'd Neil on this note.
Let us know if you're interested.

Janina

Michael Whapples writes:
> Hello,
> I noticed today using firefox that orca was speaking the greek letters
> in firefox, and I can imagine with the right documentation adding the
> other maths symbols (such as integral) would be little work, but how
> much work would it be to get orca to support the maths formatting? By
> this I mean things like superscript, subscript, and fractions. Also
> would it be possible to get orca to switch to a more verbose mode in the
> maths environments (as I don't like too much punctuation spoken when
> reading a document, but obviously need all the extra symbols in maths).
> I know firevox supports mathml (to an extent) so I guess that firefox
> makes suitable information available, but correct me if I am wrong.
> 
> Let me explain my situation further. I am studying physics at
> university, and getting mathematical documents in a suitable format to
> read has always been a problem. Due to this I have an interest in trying
> to make mathematical documents accessible. While on windows there is
> mathplayer for IE, and while it does what it is meant to, I feel it
> doesn't make maths as readable as it could be (as screen readers get the
> maths written out in words). I think to make it better for users, more
> work needs to come from the screen reader side (by having all these
> maths symbols known, so that the unicode can be recieved by the screen
> reader, rather than the name spelt out).
> 
> So I suppose I am asking the following:
> Is there any plan to do this?
> How could I help out in getting such support for maths in orca (it
> couldn't be for a couple of months as I am about to start my final year
> exams for my course, but could start after)?
> What might be involved in such work? eg. does firefox make this
> information readily available, or would that be quite involved just to
> find out what the meaning of the maths/what the underlying mathml is.
> 
> From
> Michael Whapples
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Orca-list mailing list
> Orca-list gnome org
> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/orca-list
> Visit http://live.gnome.org/Orca for more information on Orca

-- 

Janina Sajka,	Phone:	+1.202.595.7777;	sip:janina a11y org
Partner, Capital Accessibility LLC	http://CapitalAccessibility.Com

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Chair, Open Accessibility	janina a11y org	
Linux Foundation		http://a11y.org