Achieving accessibility in mathematics and other scientific fields

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What is accessibility?

inter action

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Types of impairments

Learning or communicating

disabilitiesdyslexia, autism, etc

Visual impairmentComplete or partial, and color blindness

Hearing impairment

Complete or partial

Motor or dexterity impairment

e.g. paralysis

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Whom does it affect?

in the context of a Learning Management System

such as …

Content creator

Teacher

Student

(Administrator)

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When does accessibility play a role ?

Content creation

Content interpretation

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Accessible formulas verbalised

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Types of verbalisation

2 x+1 2x + 1

Grammatical two to the power of x plus one end exponent

two to the power of x end exponent plus one

Prosodic two to the power of [pause] x plus one

two to the power of x [pause] plus one

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Limits of verbalisation

and Pros Cons

Grammatical unambiguous more complex

Prosodic simple ambiguous

What happens with the difference between

and ?

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The state of the art

“Currently there is a complete mismatch between mainstream software for mathematics and existing screen readers when it comes to multimodal presentations of formulae. In most cases formulae are printed on the screen using graphical glyphs. Hence, learning environments are basically unusable for mathematics by people with disabilities such as dyslexia, dysgraphia, and any visual impairment.”

Mika Seppälä, Florida State University

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The plugin approach

screen reader

plug-in

MathML formula

• The plug-in transforms the MathML into a textual description ready for verbalisation.

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• dependance on external elements and technologies

• incompatibilities on different devices and OS

• convivial with CSS and text formatting

• The formula adapts to user parametrisation of screen

The plugin approach : weaknesses and strengths

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The image approach

screen reader

alternative text

image

• The alternative text is automatically generated at the moment of formula creation.

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The image approach

• The formula is stored as an image.• The image contains a standard tag

“alternative text” with a textual description.

• In this example: “F open parentheses x close parentheses equal integral subscript a superscript b f open parentheses x close parentheses d x”

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• little conviviality with CSS and different text styles

• by enlargement of the formula, it loses quality due to extrapolation

• independence of plugins and screen reader produces a robust system

• transversally deployable in different devices and Operating Systems

The image approach : weaknesses and strengths

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Accessibility for content creators?

Content creator

Teacher Student

• Tools can also support the content creation process by differently able professionals

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Accessibility for content creators?

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Thanks for your att enti on

car les@wir is .com

twitt er.com/car les_wir is facebook.com/wir i smath