accessible-wikipedia-math

About

Wikipedia makes display math accessible by hiding MathML next to the image it produces. Assistive Technology (AT) can then convert the MathML to speech or braille. This extension extends that trick to inline math by converting the "HTML math" (use of <sub>, <sup>, and <i> tags) in the text of the page into MathML and inserting hidden MathML back into the document. The original output is hidden from AT by marking it with aria-hidden="true". Thus, the sighted user sees the original expression and the AT only sees the MathML.

The amount of HTML math varies with the page and the language. In most English pages, this extension makes a significant improvement because 25% - 75% of the math is HTML math; only a few HTML math examples are missed. French pages have fewer instances of HTML math, but this extension still makes a significant improvement. Most German, Asian, and Arabic pages appear to use very little HTML math and so the extension probably won't help for those languages because they are already accessible. If in doubt, try it out.

This extension helps for displayed math also (mainly English pages) in a different way. Many Wikipedia pages place larger math expressions on their own line inside of a list tag, probably for presentation reasons. However, this causes screen readers to say "list with one item" ... "out of list" for each piece of display math. This extension adds role="presentation" so that AT does not see the math as being a list and just reads the math. The display of the math is unaffected.

The extension is only active on wikipedia.org pages. It should work with any AT that reads math in MathML. This includes JAWS, NVDA, VoiceOver, and Orca.

No user data is collected by this extension.