Blind and Visually Impaired Community
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Working on converting math formulas from images to MathML format and am looking for user testers (self.Blind)
submitted 8y ago by mrinfo
Hoping there might be some blind mathematicians around that would be able to review some statistical formulas.
There is a public domain resource for learning statistics: http://onlinestatbook.com/ Many of the formulas in the book are in png and jpg form.
What we would like to do is take a few of the formulas and try a few different MathML approaches so that blind users can review and give us some feedback on what works and what doesn't. Once we have an idea of what is beneficial, we will work on rewriting some more of the formulas.
Tools like MathJax and MathML are working to improve the usability of math, and I'm collaborating with some EPUB / MathML authors to find out what works best.
The biggest concern is that just because a formula appears correctly on screen - the MathML utilized may not be accurate for some reason.
Then, on top of the MathML, there are semantics properties defined at www.openmath.org . Are these semantics useful to blind users, or are they just for machines?
Please share if you know anyone that might be able to provide advice. The goal is to release the updated work back into the public domain.
There is a public domain resource for learning statistics: http://onlinestatbook.com/ Many of the formulas in the book are in png and jpg form.
What we would like to do is take a few of the formulas and try a few different MathML approaches so that blind users can review and give us some feedback on what works and what doesn't. Once we have an idea of what is beneficial, we will work on rewriting some more of the formulas.
Tools like MathJax and MathML are working to improve the usability of math, and I'm collaborating with some EPUB / MathML authors to find out what works best.
The biggest concern is that just because a formula appears correctly on screen - the MathML utilized may not be accurate for some reason.
Then, on top of the MathML, there are semantics properties defined at www.openmath.org . Are these semantics useful to blind users, or are they just for machines?
Please share if you know anyone that might be able to provide advice. The goal is to release the updated work back into the public domain.
breathingcarbon 1 points
Sighted person here, but I am a User Experience (UX) practitioner and very interested in accessibility. The work you are describing is of enormous interest to my line of work, as I currently have several large publishing clients who are working with MathML content and accessibility is a huge factor. The company I work for is a big champion of open source software and we have released several of our own codebases into the wild (e.g. work on ORCID). Let me know if/how I can help and it would be great to stay in touch to see how the project progresses.
mrinfo [OP] 1 points
That is great!! Thanks. My concern was that I'd put in this effort to help improve the formulas for the onlinestatbook, and they would end up having some issue that isn't apparent to a sighted person.
I guess what I was finding is that there is a lot of documentation and specifications - however there is very little in real world experience shared. The latest version of the spec is quite recent, and not all browsers support it.
With the goal of finding out what some of the best practices are, I was thinking of setting up some web application that is specifically for usability testing on formulas. Where someone could post a formula and it would be presented to the testers where they could provide some details on their disability and the assistive technologies that are in place, as well as how they interperet the provided formula.
If you agree with usability testing app, perhaps some mock ups for a front end would help that we could post around to see if there is enough interest that something like this would be valuable enough to move on with. Perhaps we could even build a one-off usability test with a few sample formulas as a quick demo.
Off the top of my head, the concept could be shared with the mailing lists at http://www.w3.org/Math/ - there are also some other organizations that can be found at http://www.w3.org/wiki/Accessibility_testing
I guess what I was finding is that there is a lot of documentation and specifications - however there is very little in real world experience shared. The latest version of the spec is quite recent, and not all browsers support it.
With the goal of finding out what some of the best practices are, I was thinking of setting up some web application that is specifically for usability testing on formulas. Where someone could post a formula and it would be presented to the testers where they could provide some details on their disability and the assistive technologies that are in place, as well as how they interperet the provided formula.
If you agree with usability testing app, perhaps some mock ups for a front end would help that we could post around to see if there is enough interest that something like this would be valuable enough to move on with. Perhaps we could even build a one-off usability test with a few sample formulas as a quick demo.
Off the top of my head, the concept could be shared with the mailing lists at http://www.w3.org/Math/ - there are also some other organizations that can be found at http://www.w3.org/wiki/Accessibility_testing
narfarnst 1 points
Sign me up. How can I help?
mrinfo [OP] 1 points
Thanks. I have compiled a list of formulas from the glossary at onlinestatbook, and have worked with two different MathML authors to gather some formulas.
I'm working on setting up something that will be more useful for the testing and feedback, but to show the efforts: http://scientistsdata.com/usability-test/math-formulas.html
This is just vanilla MathML, not using MathJax Javascript library.
Each section has a header, a link to the glossary for context, a link to the image, and the two different interpretations of the formula into MathML.
Any quick thoughts?
I'm working on setting up something that will be more useful for the testing and feedback, but to show the efforts: http://scientistsdata.com/usability-test/math-formulas.html
This is just vanilla MathML, not using MathJax Javascript library.
Each section has a header, a link to the glossary for context, a link to the image, and the two different interpretations of the formula into MathML.
Any quick thoughts?
narfarnst 1 points
Which is the mathML? Or is it both?
The images on the left under each header work well for me, but the text version to the right gets jumbled and is often missing a fraction bar.
Also I use $1 extension for chrome for mostly white websites for better contrast. These examples seemed to work more or less the same with it turned on or off, but a lot of sites don't. Mainly, about half of wikipedia articles with math on them, where the formulae get sort of 'grayed-out' (not sure how to describe it). But install that extension, and use it on $1 wiki page for example.
The images on the left under each header work well for me, but the text version to the right gets jumbled and is often missing a fraction bar.
Also I use $1 extension for chrome for mostly white websites for better contrast. These examples seemed to work more or less the same with it turned on or off, but a lot of sites don't. Mainly, about half of wikipedia articles with math on them, where the formulae get sort of 'grayed-out' (not sure how to describe it). But install that extension, and use it on $1 wiki page for example.
mrinfo [OP] 1 points
Hi Narnfarnst, sorry I haven't gotten back to you. I put up the formulas example as something to get going, but there is more that I'll need to put together to get actual usability tests going. I will keep you posted.
The formulas are in sets of 3. The first is an image, and the next two are two different versions of MathML. I didn't add any CSS to position / make the MathML formulas larger yet either.
The formulas are in sets of 3. The first is an image, and the next two are two different versions of MathML. I didn't add any CSS to position / make the MathML formulas larger yet either.
[deleted] 0 points
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