Welcome to the Accessible Equation Editor!
Frequently Asked Questions
Braille Display Questions
Question
What braille displays are supported by the equation editor?
Answer
The equation editor has been successfully tested with the following displays.
- Humanware Brailliant
- Humanware BrailleNote Apex
- BAUM Vario Ultra
- HIMS Braille Sense U2
- HIMS Braille Edge
NVDA does not support emulation of the backspace key from the Brailliant keyboard with Dot 7, but this keystroke is supported internally by the equation editor.
NVDA does not support emulation of the escape key from the Apex keyboard.
Question
What braille translator is being used to generate the braille?
Answer
The equation editor contains a custom rule-based translator that converts directly from content MathML to Nemeth braille. There is no dependency on Liblouis or Duxbury. This is a completely new translator.
Question
When using the braille display, how can the student move to the next line so it doesn’t go off the screen in the editor window?
Answer
The equation editor braille input only supports single-line math input (at the moment). Multi-line math input, as well as text+math input, is on our roadmap. A visual user will see a scroll bar in the main input area, the braille window will wrap braille to additional lines, and the braille display will do what it normally does with lines that are too long in a standard document.
Question
How can the student clear the input?
Answer
The user can clear out the input at any point, either with Backspace, Delete, Undo, or Clear All.
Screen Readers
Question
I use VoiceOver and ChromeVox with Mac OS X Chrome but found that it wasn’t possible to access the equation editor. I also tried navigating to next/previous text fields but neither VoiceOver nor ChromeVox was able to find any text fields.
Answer
Right now NVDA is the screen reader that has been most used to test the equation editor, with JAWS being used to a lesser degree. It is our goal to support as many screen readers as possible, but currently the AEE is not compatible with VoiceOver or ChromeVox.
Question
Is there any way the QWERTY editor could be made accessible to NVDA as well? Not all blind students know braille but still need an accessible way to access equations and show their work.
Answer
The mode switch tells the editor how to interpret the keys it receives. If you are in QWERTY mode and still want to type from your braille device, it should work just as if you were typing from the QWERTY keyboard.
The voicing of math is its own difficult problem, and we do not support that yet. So most times what NVDA says isn’t going to be very helpful. This is because NVDA tries to read the MathJax output, and gets confused. The MathJax folks have made some excellent progress on that, and we are working to use what they’ve been able to do.
Question
Using NVDA, when arrowing through the math content that I’ve typed, the voicing does not always replicate what I’ve typed.
Answer
Arrowing through a math expression is another area where we have some substantial work to do. We have recently made some advances supporting cursor tracking in braille, and expression navigation is on our road map for future development.
General Questions
Question
The visual representation of the symbols on the buttons in the math palettes do not always match the actual operator, and some symbols appear to be repeated on the buttons.
Answer
There are cases where the Nemeth spec gives a braille encoding for an operator, and we want to show it, but we don’t currently have strong enough font support to provide a unique button label for sighted users. We hope to improve button labels, especially with some of the geometric shapes, as well as circled and squared operators.
Question
Can MathML and TeX be exported out of the Equation Editor?
Answer
The equation editor uses content MathML as its internal format, which means that export to content and/or presentation MathML and Nemeth braille are easy, and we plan to allow exporting those formats in the stand-alone version of this editor in the near future. The only blocking factor in the web version is the inability of a web-based tool to save and load files. Translations to TeX/LaTeX are not currently supported, but if there were a specific use case, going from MathML to TeX is not that difficult. Importing from TeX/LaTeX is much harder, and is not currently a near-term target.
Question
Is there currently a method of exporting unicode and ASCII braille for embossing? Is there the ability to save the translated braille in a file (i.e. .BRF or Duxbury) that can be embossed or saved?
Answer
When we are able to deliver a stand-alone desktop application we will have the ability to save/load files. Exporting to Unicode braille and ASCII braille are easy. They are there now, but just not made visible in the web version of the equation editor. Likewise, exporting to a .BRF or Duxbury file should not be difficult.
Question
Can I copy the math equation from the equation editor and paste it into Word or another editor?
Answer
A web-based application does not have access to the system clipboard, but when we are able to deliver a stand-alone desktop application, we should be able to do exactly that, and allow content and/or presentation MathML to be placed on the clipboard.
Question
Is there a version of the equation editor that will provide the math in UEB?
Answer
The equation editor provides math in Nemeth Code. There is not a version for UEB math, but we do plan to support UEB for text with embedded Nemeth for math at some point. From a technical perspective, we are not certain if similar support for UEB math is possible.