MathML is not spoken by screen readers

[becka11y]

Tested on OS X 10.10 in Safari and the Chrome Extension with VoiceOver - VO speaks blank or text for the MathML blocks.

Tested on Windows 7 in the Chrome Extension with JAWS - it speaks nothing for the MathML blocks.

I suspect this is because we are rendering via SVG?

[danielweck]

Hello @becka11y
@pkra says:

This should be fixable in the upcoming release via a new extension we're building; not ideal but what AT vendors suggested.
#262 (comment)

[pkra]

Ah, didn't see this issue. Thanks for mentioning it.

[danielweck]

@pkra Waffle.io is just a "visualizer" for the GitHub repositories / issue trackers :)
You can click on the number in the top-left corner of a Waffle.io card, to open the original GitHub issue / pull request: https://waffle.io/readium/readium-js-viewer/cards/544821477abdfe69dab9a51f

[danielweck]

For what's it worth, MathML-Cloud does a pretty good job at creating intelligible utterances for mathematical equations: http://benetech.org/our-programs/literacy/born-accessible/mathml-cloud/
https://mathmlcloud.org
https://github.com/benetech/mmlc-api/wiki/API-Definition

[pkra]

Waffle.io is just a "visualizer" for the GitHub repositories

Ah. Thanks for explaining.

MathML-Cloud does a pretty good job at creating intelligible utterances

Yes, we build the underlying technology which we're integrating into MathJax directly this year.

[danielweck]

Ah, good to know @pkra

Point of reference for the Readium team - MathJax accessibility overview ("meta" issue): mathjax/MathJax#1116

[danielweck]

Regarding Braille support, note the comments that @NSoiffer (Neil Soiffer of Design Science) made in this discussion (thanks @larsvoigt for bringing this up!):
mathjax/MathJax#1164 (comment)
https://www.dessci.com/en/products/mathplayer/

[danielweck]

@becka11y MathJax 2.6 now has better a11y support, you can test from the develop branch:

https://readium.firebaseapp.com/?epub=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.rawgit.com%2FIDPF%2Fepub-testsuite%2Fmaster%2Fcontent%2F30%2Fepub30-test-0100&goto=%7B%22idref%22%3A%22xhtml-mathml-001%22%7D

"AssistiveMML extension improves screenreader compatibility"

Thanks @pkra ! :)

[danielweck]

Documentation: http://docs.mathjax.org/en/latest/misc/accessibility-features.html#screenreader-support

[pkra]

Since MathMLCloud is mentioned, once we make a first public release for it, I'd love to talk about seeing this in Readium https://github.com/mathjax/MathJax-RespEq/wiki/Support-Matrix-a11y-tool.

[pkra]

BTW, the current release works well with Orca+Firefox (ubuntu 15.10).