Mireia Ribera, Miquel Centelles, Alberto Huélamo, Bruno Splendiani, Marina Salse ULD Conference /02/2013

Bruno Splendiani (2013) – 2 LIS Department – University of Barcelona (Spain) Grup Adaptabit: Working group on digital accessibility for teaching, research and teaching innovation

 Background  Issue  Proposal  Methodology  Further work Bruno Splendiani (2013) – 3

Accessible teaching documents project  Every educational institution must ensure access to the information for all students  Goal: Promote equal opportunities / full integration into university academic life by the use of accessible materials in academic community  Provide templates for the creation of most widespread teaching documents, and easy procedures to create alternate versions of them. Bruno Splendiani (2013) – 4

Outputs  “Guides for creating Accessible Digital Contents”  Templates ▪ Teaching documents in academic community (exams, exercises, tutorials, lessons and slides) ▪ Best format suited to each context (Office, PDF, LaTex…) ▪ Adaptation to the needs of blind and low vision students and students with dyslexia 5 Bruno Splendiani (2013) –

Templates for the conversions to accessible digital formats, but Mathematical notation / formulae present specific accessibility barriers and impose specific requirements in conversion Why? 6 Bruno Splendiani (2013) –

 Most word processors process mathematical notations/formulae through a codification system or graphical formats procedures.  Not suitable for assistive technology (e.g. JAWS, Zoom Text)  Consequences  Barriers to blind and low-vision people  Barriers to people with dyslexia or Attention- Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD) 7 Bruno Splendiani (2013) –

 Solution: MathML  XML language for the markup of mathematical formulae  Renderized audio of electronic documents  Expressions magnifiers (low-vision users)  Limitations ▪ Mathematicians writing on text processors or in LaTex, not in MathML ▪ MathML not fully supported by browsers 8 Bruno Splendiani (2013) –

 Test which text editor/LaTex and browser best creates and renders mathematical formulae in MathML  Obtain evidences of capability on writing mathematical formulae  Obtain evidences of capability and quality on viewing and listening to mathematical formulae. 9 Bruno Splendiani (2013) –

10 Bruno Splendiani (2013) –

 Testbed was designed with two main components:  Catalogue of a selection of 139 different formulae (LibreOffice Math 3.3.2) 11 Bruno Splendiani (2013) –

 Three text processors + one LaTex editor with specific capabilities for processing mathematical notation  Text processors ▪ MS Word 2007 ( ) SP3 MSO ( ) ▪ MS Word 2007 ▪ MS Word 2007 with MathType 6.0 (DesignScience) ▪ LibreOffice Math  Latex editor ▪ MiKTeX 2.9 TeXnicCentre 1.0  The most used editors by faculty members of UB 12 Bruno Splendiani (2013) –

Results of the formulae processed with the editors were converted into MathML 13 Bruno Splendiani (2013) –

 To view and listen on different internet browsers the results of conversion to MathML  Visualization  Firefox 12.0 (Win)  MathML native support  Opera (Win)  MathML native support  Safari 6.01 (Mac)  MathML native support  Visualization and Listening  Internet Explorer 8 ( + MathPlayer Plug-in) 14 Bruno Splendiani (2013) –

Two different indicators  Visualization review  Quality of displays values  Not acceptable display;  acceptable display;  best display  Listening review  Quality of reading (Mathplayer options : Spanish language / Reading for the blind)  MathPlayer doesn’t read the formula;  MathPlayer reads the formula partially;  MathPlayer reads the formula correctly 15 Bruno Splendiani (2013) –

MS Word empowered with MathType best solution in terms of  number of symbols correctly interpreted  quality of displays for visualization  quality of readings for listening  Strengths  the high quality in visualization of big operators (\sum, \prod, \coprod…) and resizable delimiters  Better results even compared to LibreOffice  Limitations  6 mathematical expressions not rendered (out of 139) 16 Bruno Splendiani (2013) –

LaTex  11 mathematical expressions not rendered (out of 139)  By default LaTex exports formulas in a nonstandard typography  limitation in viewing and in Mathplayer listening 17 Bruno Splendiani (2013) –

 IE+MathPlayer visualization of expressions processed by MSWord 2007+MathType is the best solution  Firefox is the better browser without plugins  Opera lowest performance  Safari quite good, but bad performance with accents 18 Bruno Splendiani (2013) –

 Best results on IE+MathPlayer is MS Word 2007+MathType  LaTeX MiKTeX TeX2ht lower performance 19

 Recommendations addressed to University professors (research based)  Manuals for the creation on how to convert Latex formulas and how to create formulas with MathType  Share results data  Conversion from paper (Inftyreader) 20 Bruno Splendiani (2013) –

Questions Opinions Suggestions… 21