Chapter 7 Accessibility issues identified

Issues identified so far (tested with ChromeVox extension on Chromium browser on Linux) and WAVE Accessibility checker.

1. 1.
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   LATExml generates repetitive TITLE tags on navigation links and page titles which results in ChromeVox to e.g. announce this page as “Chapter 7 Accessibility issues identified triangular bullet forall x: a11y triangular bullet forall x: a11y” (LaTeXML bug)

2. 2.
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   ChromeVox pronounces labels of enumerate lists twice.

3. 3.
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   ChromeVox does not pronounce plain MathML formulas at all. (Solution: use MathJax with accessibility extensions loaded or selected in context menu.)

4. 4.
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   ChromeVox does not pronounce formulas unless accessibility option “Speech; Speech Output” is enabled and page reloaded (Possible solution: MathJax configuration file, see https://docs.mathjax.org/en/latest/options/accessibility.html).

5. 5.
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   Chrome renders plain MathML very badly (Solution: use MathJax or output formulas as HTML).

6. 6.
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   Not sure how to get ChromeVox to (sometimes, at least) pronounce quotation marks.

7. 7.
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   ChromeVox says “application” after every formula. (Only happens when formula is selected, not when reading running text—I think it indicates the context menu is clickable. There should be a way to remove the MathJax context menu, but then the accessibility settings of MathJax aren’t configurable.)

8. 8.
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   SVG images generated by LATExml don’t get ALT tags. ChromeVox pronounces labels only. Solutions:

   • ‣
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     Use BookML to convert to SVG files and use \blmDescription command for ALT tag. This works but you may not like the resulting SVG, e.g., text is in Computer Modern.

   • ‣
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     Explicitly wrap the diagrams in a div with an aria-label. This may not work on all screen readers since aria-label is supposed to be used only on interactive elements

   Both of these require BookML and don’t work with plain LaTeXML. (LaTeXML issue)

9. 9.
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   ChromeVox does not pronounce text ellipsis (…), only math ellipsis ($\mathrm{\dots }$). (Hack: redefine \dots as \ensuremath{\dots}).

10. 10.
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    ChromeVox pronounces “dot” ending sentences ending in formulas.

11. 11.
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    ChromeVox pronounces symbols badly:

    1. (a)
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       $\mathrm{\neg }$ is “normal not sign” should be “logical not”.

    2. (b)
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       $⊢$ is “right tack” but “$⊬$” is “does not prove”.

    3. (c)
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       $\models$ is “true”.

    4. (d)
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       $\mathrm{\square }$ is “normal white square” should be “box”.

    5. (e)
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       $\mathrm{◇}$ is “normal white diamond” should be “diamond”.

    The pronounciation, it seems, is provided by MathJax, which e.g., produces the following MathML code for $\mathrm{\neg }$:

        <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" id="p3.m1" alttext="\neg" display="inline" class="ltx_Math">
      <semantics>
        <mi data-semantic-type="identifier" data-semantic-role="unknown" data-semantic-font="normal" data-semantic-id="0" data-semantic-speech="normal not sign" mathvariant="normal">&#xAC;</mi>
        <annotation encoding="application/x-tex">\neg</annotation>
      </semantics>
    </math>
      
    

    The “normal” part in “normal not sign” is a bug in LaTeXML where it convers some symbols to <mi mathvariant="normal"> tags instead of <mo> tags (LaTeXML issue).

12. 12.
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    When using \mathord{\sim} for a tilde used as not with correct spacing, ChromeVox pronounces “$\mathrm{\sim }A$” as “tilde times upper a”. (Solution: use \mathop{\sim}; LaTeXML issue.)

13. 13.
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    \text inside formulas produces an identifier; ChromeVox reads, e.g., $A\text{ and }B$ as “upper A times and times upper B.”

14. 14.
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    align’d displayed formulas don’t show up with MathJax rendered as SVG (Bookml issue).

15. 15.
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    Some things like factoidbox backgrounds and proof scope lines don’t get inverted in night mode (BookML issue)