Making Math Accessible

News: MathML usage keeps growing!

Just in case you don't read the Design Science New blog, I am repeating this article here because it will be of interest to this blog.

Every so often, we take a look at how MathPlayer is being used. In the last 22 months, MathPlayer 2.0 and 2.1 have racked up nearly 500,000,000 MathML expressions viewed -- that's one half billion expressions. That's a lot of math!

MathPlayer V2.1 introduced accessibility features when it was released less than two years age. In that time, over 1.8 million expressions were spoken aloud by screen readers and other assistive technology. That pales in comparison to how much math was viewed, but that is 1.8 million expressions that would likely have been unreadable without MathML and MathPlayer. These numbers are a reminder why the NFB recommends using MathML and reinforce the importance of using MathML for representing math expressions so that everyone can have access to math.

You can learn more about MathPlayer from our MathPlayer web site, including how to download MathPlayer for free. You can also learn more about MathML and accessibility from there and from our math accessibility web site.

AMATYC article on creating accessible DAISY math documents with Word

The American Mathematical Association of Two-Year Colleges' August Newsletter published an article I wrote on how to create accessible materials from Word [PDF]. The AMATYC article presents a short summary on how to use MathDaisy and MathML-enabled DAISY players to go from a Word document to the fully accessible DAISY equivalent.  The DAISY format is the gold standard for accessibility, allowing players to provide a rich multi-modal interactive reading experience.  If you want an introduction to creating accessible materials that contain math, this article is a good place to start.  Check out our website if you want details about  MathDaisy and creating accessible materials that contain math for MathML-enabled DAISY players.