University of Sheffield Guidance
The University of Sheffield Guidance is now behind a log in so this is a copy taken in May 2022
Find specific advice relating to making mathematical and statistical content accessible to learners, including equation editors, content creation tools (LaTeX, RMarkdown), tools for creating graphs, tables and diagrams, and captions for videos.
- Equations in digital learning tools
- Creating content
- Creating graphs, tables and diagrams
- Live captioning
Mathematics and accessibility is a complex area without many clear solutions. This guidance pulls together best practice and ideas from within the University of Sheffield and other institutions. Assistive tools like Equatio have been made available to all staff and students to help everyone create and understand mathematical notation. On this page you will find links to further information as many of the ideas mentioned here require specialist guidance.
Equation editors should be used for mathematical notation. Standard text with superscripts or special characters should not be used (e.g. using superscripts as powers or using the Pi symbol), as they will not be recognised as equations and will be read incorrectly by assistive technologies.
Equatio creates digital mathematical notation that you can include in your Word Docs, Google Docs, Presentations, and other electronic resources. Equatio can be downloaded, or accessed via Chrome extension by all staff and students.
For equations or formulae in Microsoft Word and PowerPoint the inbuilt equation editor should be used, or Equatio. In Office 365, LaTeX can be used and the SIGMA network provides advice for keyboard only entry. Blackboard Ally might not recognise the equations when converting files, so they will not be included in some of the alternative formats it produces. An accessibility score of 100% may be shown despite it not being accessible. Students will need to be told this and should use the original file with any adaptive technologies required which is likely to produce better results.
The inbuilt equation editor. in Blackboard is by WIRIS. It creates accessible content by displaying as an image with automatically generated alt text. Where LaTeX input is used this will be rendered as an image. The alt text for images created using LaTeX may not be accurate. The desktop version of Equatio can be used by students to read out the equations with a higher degree of accuracy.
Equations are input using LaTeX and displayed using MathJax which is an accessible format.
PDF outputs from LaTeX will not meet accessibility requirements by default. You should consider the general principles of accessibility when designing content, including such things as font size, colours and line spacing. Lancaster University has produced a checklist for creating LaTeX resources with accessibility considerations in mind. Instead, a suitable alternative is to compile your LaTeX to HTML in addition to pdf. HTML is very well suited to screen readers and the MathML tool renders mathematical content appropriately. Student Digital Associates conducted a review of three popular conversion tools (Chirun, lwarp, Pandoc) and we recommend using the Pandoc tool to convert LaTeX to HTML due to its ease of use, and conversion quality. Learners should open converted HTML files in Firefox for maximum compatibility. Full guidance, including suggested workarounds for typical conversion issues is available Pandoc Guide - Converting LaTeX documents into HTML web pages Some colleagues at the University have had success using different methods to create HTML versions of LaTeX resources. There are instructions for LaTeXML and examples from Neil Strickland’s combinatorics course. Nic Freeman has used lwarp and provides a tutorial with examples. RMarkdown for creating content RMarkdown allows output of HTML that can be rendered with MathJax which works well with assistive technologies. The Learning and Teaching Hub at University of Bath has guidance on using RMarkdown to create content. This has been well used by Dylan Childs in teaching biostatistics.
The DIAGRAM Centre provides advice around accessible image descriptions for many different areas including STEM subjects. Desmos for Graphs Desmos, which can be used as a stand alone tool or is built into Equatio, is a free graphing tool that can be used by staff and students which has a number of useful accessibility features built in. For details and a video demonstration please see the Desmos website. Tables Complex tables, such as those with rowspans, colspans or multiple levels of headings are very difficult for screen reader users to understand. There is advice on creating accessible tables from WebAIM.
Mathematical video content should follow the guidelines described on the Creating Accessible Video page. If you are displaying equations within a video, you should ensure these are described within the narration. Further information about capturing handwriting guidance is also available. Frazer Jarvis (School of Mathematics and Statistics) has provided a method for adding LaTeX to open captions to display equations if that is appropriate.