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developersWG 06.24.2016

Charles LaPierre edited this page Jul 1, 2016 · 3 revisions

DIAGRAM Developers Meeting Notes

June 24, 2016

Participants

Charles LaPierre, Anh Bui, Amaya Webster, Derek Riemer, Sina Bahram, Neil Soiffer, Alan Harnum, John Gardner, Josh Meile, Kyle Keane

Regrets:Gerardo Capiel, David Bolter, Ed Summers, Peter Krautzberger, Geoff Freed, Richard Ladner

Agenda

  1. Brief introduction of what DIAGRAM is and what the role this developers working group would play. (5 min)
  2. Brief introduction of the co-chairs Neil and Sina (5 min)
  3. Introductions by each of the members (Briefly introduce yourselves to the team, who you work for and what are your interests as they may pertain to this Working Group. (5-10 min)
  4. Review of the Charter and discussion on any proposed changes needed (5-10 min)
  5. Dive into what are some technologies we should start looking into as possible areas that will help improve accessibility of educational materials for various forms of disabilities. (30 min)
  • Possible Topics from TASC (Minutes: https://github.com/benetech/DiagramTASC/wiki/5.27.2016)
  • Interactive Widgets and Block Languages (interactive simulations, assessments,
  • We need Design patterns for accessibility widgets, drag & drop, voice based control (Amazon Echo)
  • Haptic Learning
  • Accessible Charts
  • Emotional Detection

6.Next Steps, schedule next meeting, suggest topics for next meeting. (time remaining)

Group Interests/backgrounds

Neil Soifer: MathPlayer plugin (speech for math, liblouis library math related a11y 10 years

Sina Bahram: digital a11y user experience web, mobile, inclusive design math, interaction paradigms, STEM, new emerging technologies, such as: touch, augmented technologies, multimodal interactions.

Alan Harnum: remote participant in math sprint, multimodal using D3. I am interested in multimodal 1:1 level design. Seeing math coming in from different directions.

John Gardner: I am not a developer, but do hack scripts together, and created lean-math trying to improve the ability of blind not just to read math but also to write it. I am president of View Plus, and have taught physics previously.

Josh Meile: smith Kettelewell developer, specifically on video description, web authoring based tools, video descriptions, maps, graphics, a11y multimodal tools. hardware tools.

Derek Reimer: University of Colorado student. a11y NVDA contributor. a11y consulting design a11y solutions

Kyle Keane : Phd in physics, programming mathematic low vision interactive widgets something on web realtime feedback. teach programming user design founding startup a11y technology.

Charter Review

Sina: I think that is fine, my question is establish persona based solutions, or are we trying to identify: those are accessible. if the principles are followed. Speech input then speech diction software

Neil: Universal A11y in finding code samples/widets target separate disabilities physical disabilities , switch input guided for math. focus on area

Best in class on per functional implementation. on a universally design way

For bullet Point #1 hearing vision, and a few more disabilities best in class examples for use cases for accessing STEM materials. B: possibility for weaving them together.

John : 3rd bullet point. first bullet point identify what need to address. then identify areas where software for them.

Josh: asked for a re-reading of the original Bullet point #1 in Charter "Identify at least 5 areas in addition to visual and hearing impairments which currently limit access to educational materials." Sina: Bullet #1 : Change 5 to as many as appropriate or possible.

Sina: capture Neils point of on Bullet point #3 "Identify at least 25 small code samples, widgets, or tools that will impact the accessibility of educational material for a variety of disabilities identified." lets change the #25 to as many as possible and not a single disipline's use case.

Ratified: Bullet points #1 ad #3 will be modified to make them more general in nature and not have specific target numbers. Charles will adjust the charter to reflect these changes and have Neil and Sina review before finalizing the charter.

Discussion

Sina: couple things that came out that may not be scope here like block level language, concerns with pipeline problem programming etc. there will be overlap but those are specific to that meeting Presentational math, looking at list in invite: Design patterns for a11y widgets that might be a good place to explore here and prevent us to get into the weeds. Strategic first then dive into tactics.

Design patterns for Widgets. consumption : math (graphics visualization) Reading / accessing of materials then synthesizing of those materials. Does anyone know JAWS or NVDA in an interactive format for Screen Readers.

Alan: no The rest of the group said yes.

If we take that as a solution on the reading side. Where is the state of accessible synthesis. Persons work on a11y math editor. Josh: syntheses writing, both right? Yes

Reading/Writing we have a working solution for exploration, but not for writing

Neil: Pearson solution demoed at CSUN using Braille, generate braille, or type braille and turned into math. solution that is targeted to braille users Nemeth Braille. editing itself (it does have speech output, NVDA was speaking: Neil no it doesn’t do that yet) GH - Alabama partner, waves (JS version of it limited version in DIAGRAM sight and open source version there)

URL: http://diagramcenter.org/accessible-math-tools-tips-and-training.html#waves

a11y of typing and editing and hear what you are typing in and using math speak hear what was spoken. constrained as an editor lower grade algebra, but didn't

WIRIS editor and they can generate speech out of it, but it does produce some speech, it is accessible and full editor, but not a fan of navigation/speech but also has hand written input. I asked John G. but he wrote a math equation as well as I could as well. very interesting demo

Derek: I did an a11y test for McGraw Hill Alex math exams and homework JAWS, it seems they are new to a11y they seems like they don’t know how to do this but they are doing a web browsers based.

Neil: do you know if there is a link?

Derek: not that I know it was a private demo. (writing out Left Paren, and putting in commas in so it would pause, and writing out “Plus” etc…)

John:Seems like they are far from the mark and can be ignored.

Neil: authoring tools are coming out,

Sina: What happened to Virtual Pencil?

Neil: I asked about that years ago, but he stopped

John: Win Triangle, Lean, Chatty Infty

Alan: Henter Math project hentermath.com (reached out to Ted last year, it is defunct) but still available online.

John :Problem with pencil but couldn’t be make profitable. I don’t think a commercial company could make profitable.

John :Nifty Reader OCR of math, wrote a (Chatty) is the a11y version of that editor, costs a few hundred dollars. saves in word and various other formats. only works with word and MathTYPE. beta copies are available, I

Sina: Is lean open source?

John: its free but not open source yet, its a jumbled mess.

Sina: I have a no judge policy.. we could open source it within this group. then others could improve it… it could serve as a base.

Neil: could be our first widget.

John: I am president of View plus and would like something that could be integrated with our products etc…training materials. etc..

Sina: I am happy to work out something with you. that might be a neat way to have a base. Sample front-end and backend … could be our interactive playground. Followup discussion for Sina,John and whoever else needs to be interested (Derek…)

Josh: I am not entirely sure with the scope and if this fits. Phill one of the easiest ways is with a Perkins braille, don’t have copy paste and if one of the areas blended hardcopy software. I would like to remember low-tech stuff and how it could connect to digital media in creative ways.

Sina: if we are coming from braille input/output we shouldn’t ignore it. Nemeth back translation. Young girl she high school student pattent back translation of Nemeth Braille

Derek: Nichole Transini?

Neil: big fan of math but we don’t need to just focus on that. Charts, and diagrams. periodic table , biology, we shouldn’t neglect this

Sina: think a few of us has some solutions, can individually you can email Neil, Sina and I your solutions so we can add them to the baseline.

Do we want to limit this to only the web?

Neil: a lot of the time I am doing word/ powerpoint, I would hate to say that we limit to just the web.

Sina: as far as workflow goes it is easy to prototyping things. If we want to explore something in Word then we need to write plug ins to word via c++ etc…

John: word part was done by a software engineer. I have done is platform independent, but problem is a large fraction of what we have is not web based.. I think lets aim for more on web but we need to also work with off-web technologies as well.

Neil: Haptic tool not sure how to do on web.

Sina: there is a web api for it/ in terms of widgets we don’t want to limit to web

Alan: we want to be as open as possible, but I would 2nd Sina’s emphasis because knowing where broader support community in place that may be the path of least resistance. where it is easiest where it make sense then lets run with that, but just don’t limit

Sina: # of folks should have been a lot larger, decision on that over the next few weeks. pointe out that make sure we have email discussions follow up and contribute to the wiki minutes.

Derek: Are we limited to just developers? what about Professors.

Neil: We could get Professors who have students who may be coders.

Anh: Thanks everyone for this very meaty discussion, I can't wait to see what you all do in the future.

Charles: Please send me your github accounts and any suggestions you have for other developers that you feel may have time to contribute to this group. charlesl@benetech.org