{"id":1567,"date":"2020-02-14T10:42:13","date_gmt":"2020-02-14T10:42:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.ucem.ac.uk\/onlineeducation\/?p=1567"},"modified":"2020-06-10T08:38:25","modified_gmt":"2020-06-10T08:38:25","slug":"screenreader-accessibility-of-mathematical-equations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.ucem.ac.uk\/onlineeducation\/posts\/1567","title":{"rendered":"Accessibility of Mathematical Equations with Screenreader"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I have previously blogged about&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/blog.ucem.ac.uk\/onlineeducation\/posts\/1276\">Mathematical Equations in Moodle<\/a>&nbsp;where I showed how to use MathJax Filter to display mathematical equations in a Moodle page. However, testing equations with screenreader we found that even when we had used MathJax it was not correctly read out.<\/p>\n<p>You can see the page we have tested here:<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1568\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1568\" style=\"width: 913px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.ucem.ac.uk\/onlineeducation\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/moodlebook.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1568\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.ucem.ac.uk\/onlineeducation\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/moodlebook.png\" alt=\"A screenshot of a Moodle page with equations \" width=\"913\" height=\"589\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.ucem.ac.uk\/onlineeducation\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/moodlebook.png 913w, https:\/\/blog.ucem.ac.uk\/onlineeducation\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/moodlebook-300x194.png 300w, https:\/\/blog.ucem.ac.uk\/onlineeducation\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/moodlebook-768x495.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 913px) 100vw, 913px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1568\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Moodle page with equations<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Our testing showed that:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Windows Narrator worked well with Edge browser<\/li>\n<li>NVDA did not work with Chrome, Firefox or IE<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>After some desk research I found that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dessci.com\/en\/products\/mathplayer\/\">MathPlayer free software<\/a> allows NVDA to read math equations. Read the article&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.perkinselearning.org\/technology\/blog\/how-read-math-expressions-screen-reader-windows-computer\">How to Read Math Expressions with a Screen Reader on a Windows Computer<\/a> to find out more.<\/p>\n<p>This is how the page section with the equation was read by NVDA on Firefox before installing MathPlayer. Basically the screenreader did not &#8220;see&#8221; the equation. It did read half that was in the page though.<\/p>\n<div style=\"background-color: #e6e6ea;\">one-half<br \/>\ncollapsed separator separated list of length 1<br \/>\nUse the&nbsp;&nbsp; link&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Moodle MathJax filter guide&nbsp;&nbsp; here to help you.<\/div>\n<p>After installing MathPlayer it was read as:<\/p>\n<div style=\"background-color: #e6e6ea;\">x<br \/>\nequals<br \/>\ntimes<br \/>\nthe fraction with numerator<br \/>\nthe square root of<br \/>\n144<br \/>\nand denominator<br \/>\n2<br \/>\ntimes<br \/>\ntimes<br \/>\nopen paren<br \/>\ny<br \/>\nplus<br \/>\n12<br \/>\nclose paren<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dessci.com\/en\/products\/mathplayer\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-1575 size-large\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.ucem.ac.uk\/onlineeducation\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/MathPlayer-1024x207.png\" alt=\"MathPlayer Logo\" width=\"758\" height=\"153\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.ucem.ac.uk\/onlineeducation\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/MathPlayer-1024x207.png 1024w, https:\/\/blog.ucem.ac.uk\/onlineeducation\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/MathPlayer-300x61.png 300w, https:\/\/blog.ucem.ac.uk\/onlineeducation\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/MathPlayer-768x155.png 768w, https:\/\/blog.ucem.ac.uk\/onlineeducation\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/MathPlayer.png 1454w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 758px) 100vw, 758px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I am not 100% sure this is what is expected by a screen reader user as there seems to be too many &#8220;times&#8221; than how I would have read the equation. After installing MathPlayer, I could get NVDA to read equations on Chrome, Firefox and IE.<br \/>\nHowever, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.perkinselearning.org\/\">Perkins School for the Blind eLearning<\/a>&nbsp;recommends Firefox browser use. If you have been able to get screenreaders to work well with math equations please let us know. We are keen to learn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have previously blogged about&nbsp;Mathematical Equations in Moodle&nbsp;where I showed how to use MathJax Filter to display mathematical equations in a Moodle page. However, testing&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":1573,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,68],"tags":[26,146,145,143,144,147,148,149,141,142],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.ucem.ac.uk\/onlineeducation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1567"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.ucem.ac.uk\/onlineeducation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.ucem.ac.uk\/onlineeducation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ucem.ac.uk\/onlineeducation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ucem.ac.uk\/onlineeducation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1567"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ucem.ac.uk\/onlineeducation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1567\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1703,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ucem.ac.uk\/onlineeducation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1567\/revisions\/1703"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ucem.ac.uk\/onlineeducation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.ucem.ac.uk\/onlineeducation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ucem.ac.uk\/onlineeducation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ucem.ac.uk\/onlineeducation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}