Re: [office-accessibility] A tweak to the Section 4.5

[Richard Schwerdtfeger <schwer@us.ibm.com>]

Thank you! I have made all the changes
including those from Janina and Steve. I am just waiting for Peter Korn's
change for section 2.1. Peter may be back from vacation this week. I also
removed a reference to LSR where we refer to Linux ATs.

Here is the latest draft with edits.





Rich



Rich Schwerdtfeger
Distinguished Engineer, SWG Accessibility Architect/Strategist
Chair, IBM Accessibility Architecture Review  Board
blog: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/schwer

"Steve Noble" <steven@dessci.com>

06/21/2007 02:17 PM

To	<office-accessibility@lists.oasis-open.org>
cc
Subject	[office-accessibility] A tweak to the Section 4.5

In regards to Section 4.5 "Preservation of MathML
accessibility
information"

We need to change what is now three brief paragraphs, and replace it
with only one paragraph below...

1) The existing (problematic) language:
--begin--
MathML can be exported to XHTML for use by Firefox or Internet Explorer
when used with the (free) MathPlayer plug-in, MathML also  interfaces
with screen readers to make the math accessible. MathML is supported in
HTML by Internet Explorer and in an experimental version of Firefox. 

But in general, MathML support in HTML is problematic if cross-platform
compatibility is  required. For example, one industry approach to
cross-platform compatibility, which has been use by the object tag in
HTML??sentence not clear??.

However, Internet Explorer's implementation of object tag does not
follow the W3C guidelines and its rendering results are poor, so this
approach is discouraged.
--end--

2) Rationale for change:
The first sentence should have another comma, to make it clear
MathPlayer is only required in IE.  Also, to say MathML can be exported
*to* XHTML isn't correct terminology.  We should keep the XHTML and
HTML
statements parallel in that regard, and say "MathML is supported..."
in
both cases. Finally, the object tag reference is not constructive. There
was some past proposal to use object tags for XML "islands" in
HTML, but
that's now been effectively left behind, so there's nothing to gain from
mentioning it here.

3) The suggested revised language:
--begin--
MathML is supported in XHTML by Firefox, or Internet Explorer when used
with the (free) MathPlayer plug-in, which interfaces with screen readers
to make the math accessible. MathML is also supported in HTML by
Internet Explorer and in an experimental version of Firefox, but due to
the lack of universal MathML implementation in all browsers, HTML
cross-platform compatibility is difficult to ensure.
--end--
 
This should do it.

Steve Noble
Director of Accessibility Policy
Design Science, Inc.
E-mail: SteveN@DesSci.com
Phone: (502) 969-3088
http://www.dessci.com/accessibility

ODF_Accessibility_Guidelines_25_25Jun2007_mp_rev draft2.odt