N. Soiffer: Math Accessibility and MathPlayer

MathPlayer is a free plug-in to Internet Explorer that visually and aurally renders MathML in web.
MathPlayer was first released many years ago, but starting with Version 2.0 and enhanced in Version 2.1, it incorporates accessibility features. These include:

• Matching the size, color, and baseline with the rest of the document
• Enlargement of individual expressions
• Speech integrated with screen readers and other assistive technology
• Synchronized highlighting of the text with speech
• DotsPlus Braille printing

MathPlayer works with several screen readers (JAWS, Window-Eyes, HAL), magnifiers (ZoomText, MAGic), at least one learning disability tool (TextHelp). One of the main goals of MathPlayer is to allow users to continue to use tools they are familiar with when reading documents that contain math. In the year since MathPlayer 2.1 was released, over 180 million expressions have been viewed using it and over one million expressions have been read using a screen reader or other assistive technology.

Several new features have been developed for Version 3 of MathPlayer that should greatly increase it usability:

• Multiple styles of speech that can be customized by the user to fit their unique needs
• Multiple languages are supported
• Support for many braille math codes

There are many ways to create web pages that can be viewed by MathPlayer. One of the easiest is to use MathType and Word: simply enter the math as you normally would using MathType and use the MathType toolbar to convert the document to a webpage that contains MathML.

Web pages are one of three common formats that people receive today; the other two are Word documents and PDF. We have developed a "MathPlayer for PDF" that can do most of what MathPlayer does with Internet Explorer. This works on PDF that contains MathML, but that is currently something that only experimental PDF documents contain. Work is moving forward towards an accessible PDF format. The PDF/UA working group hopes to present a draft to an ISO meeting early in 2009. In the meantime, a proposal for adding MathML tags to PDF was endorsed by the US ISO delegation and they will be presenting that at a full ISO meeting in Beijing in October.

Download the presentation material here.