Consider implementing MathJax to produce formatted Maths expressions on the Help pages

[AlOneill]

MathJax (https://docs.mathjax.org/en/latest/basic/mathjax.html) is a way of writing mathematical expressions on webpages using correct glyphs and spacing. It does not use images. It uses Tex and Latex formatting.

There are some concepts relating to how the search takes year of birth and related ideas into account when finding possible matches. The only way to explain these in a possibly accessible way is using the correct glyphs and spacing.

"MathJax includes the ability to generate speakable text versions of your mathematical expressions that can be used with screen readers, providing accessibility for the visually impaired." See MathJax accessibility features for more details.

We would need to investigate the possibility of using MathJax in Refinery and could find that we would have to put any MathJax expressions on App pages. Any awkwardness of doing so could be well worth it.

If MathJax is not the answer, what other mechanism could we use?

[richardofsussex]

It would be helpful to have some specific examples of the requirement. Getting "the correct glyphs and spacing" can potentially be achieved using CSS, though I don't see how this would help a non-sighted user (certainly not the spacing aspect). I can see that a speakable text version could be helpful, though again I would welcome an example of what it might be saying. All things being equal, I would prefer to meet the requirement without introducing yet another technology into our web publication platform.

We should bear in mind that Refinery is life-expired, and we are actively considering what content management system might replace it. Any solution to this issue should be capable of migrating to whatever environment we adopt to replace Refinery.

It's pretty clear that we would have to express our mathematical expressions using TeX/LaTeX, MathML or AsciiMath. Of these, MathML would be my choice (though I have never heard of AsciiMath until today). Either way, this will require our documentation people to acquire new skills.

[AlOneill]

@richardofsussex
This is from the BMD1 site, on the page https://www.freebmd.org.uk/aad-search-help.shtml. I was asked to look at marking it up for BMD2 but gave up trying to render the mathematical expressions properly:

Part of the issue was that Refinery does not allow the use of many maths symbols; the other problem is getting the spacing to work nicely in HTML. But, as you say, Refinery is on the way out, … eventually.

Characters that look correct are much easier to understand and good spacing is also key to understanding.

I suggest that one person has to be able to use TeX / LateX style expressions (my preferred choice, as it happens): these will be fairly easy and once the page is done it should not need updating.

As for how the expressions would sound to a screen reader user, we would have to test with an actual screen reader, much as we do for all our pages. This seems to be the most promising method but I do not see this as urgent in any way.

[AlOneill]

This is a small example of how MathJax (in this case implemented in Obsidion) can improve the look (and understandability) of mathematical expressions with very little effort. LateX syntax is pretty intuitive for simple, flat expressions such as these.

Compare this image with the equivalent lines in the image above and tell me this is not a huge improvement!

At some point I will listen to how the Mac screen reader renders this example from Obsidion (this is an image and so it does not do MathJax full justice, of course :-) I'll report here on the outcome.

I should add that MathJax is written in JavaScript and so the technology will not be totally new to our website.

[richardofsussex]

At the risk of adding another unresolved image to this thread, this is what I get when I click on the link in the above message:

(That's been happening from time to time in GitHub recently.)

[AlOneill]

@richardofsussex
But you can see the images in ZenHub, yes?

If I select the GitHub link from a message, the images never (or almost never) show, so I don't do that any more. ZenHub all the way!

[richardofsussex]

Sorry, no - I get the same link, and the same error, in ZenHub.

[AlOneill]

Have sent the two images above to @richardofsussex as email attachments.

[AlOneill]

@richardofsussex Sorry, but CSS-inserted glyphs would not be accessible to screen reader users as the software reads only the HTML. This is a recurring issue.