developersWG 12.06.2018
Charles, Amaya, Neil, Doug, Jason, Volker, Cary, Richard, Sina, Jesse, Michael Regrets: Bruce
Here is a link to the audio recording with auto-generated transcript
Projects that we could have a couple CS student Interns take on for a month in January. Their CS experience includes Web-Dev in React, JavaScript, Java, Python, Swift/iOS, and AWS
Charles: DIAGRAM is going to have a couple CS intern in January. One of the projects they will work on is Benetech's Math Detective project. Which is where we take a scanned page, run it through a 3rd part program that determines if there is math on an image and if there is it will go through Math Pix, or a different one, engine, and convert it to MathML. And we are injecting that math back into an EPUB book.
Richard: I'm sure I can come up with some. I can send you some. It would be good to know what their skill set is.
Charles: I believe it's in the invite I sent. But includes Swift, IOs and some others.
Richard: If someone is iOS fluent or Swift fluent I may have a project for them with our Dash project. It's on test flight at the moment and I can say the email of the person running the show.
Sina: I would love to play with it if I wouldn't step on anyone's toes.
Neil: Would work on the math speech input be moved forward if they worked on it?
Charles: That's a possibility.
Sina: I would second that.
Charles: Bruce was wondering if a project would be available using the PhET simulations, but would defer to Emily Moore.
Sina: when we've discussed PhET projects in the past, the concern voiced was that it takes time to school up with the ability to contribute to PhET. In the context of the other call that's happening with the D&D committee, that might be an appropriate place to test a drag and drop scenario we've been exploring.
Charles: that's a good point. Maybe we can ask Michale from Phet if that has changed.
Jason: I'm wondering if the accessibility object model work would facilitate that.
Charles: Good point, and we should wait to see what PhET is doing on the speech queuing model.
Sina: Using AOM to avoid the need for a live region, or thinking AOM could facilitate less of the timing difficulties form the browser.
Jason: I'm wondering about potential issues like mathematics presentation. I suspect they may not have reached the point in implementation that they are ready for that.
Sina: A thing that could be helpful would be to have them help on the drag and drop side of things. We have a couple of documents now, some categorization of different drag and drop strategies and we were looking at code implementation of some of these things. If there are any of the strategies need to be captured, that might be something they could do that would also let them learn a lot about how it drag and drop can be made more accessible in different environments.
Charles: Jesse and Michael from PhET have joined us now.
Jesse: What is the timeline for the intern?
Charles: Two students full time for the month of January. They have your standard web dev stack experience.
Jesse: I'd like to talk to Emily about it. One month seems kind of tight for the onboarding process, but we should think about it.
Charles: yeah, it would be nice if we could get something where the onboarding is really short.
Michael: Onboarding is something we've been thinking about. I was just saying we need to think of some modular stuff, so we'll get back to you.
2019 Code Sprint - Personalization projects Web4All Conference (May 15-16)
Charles: DIAGRAM is partnering up with the folks putting on the web4all conference to put on our 2019 code sprint which will be based on personalization.
Volker: It's at the Hyatt Regency in San Francisco at the Embarcadero. Sunday there is a doctoral consortium and Monday and Tuesday is the conference and on Wednesday we have a join keynote with the webconference and then there is a hackathon. This year we will do a two-day hackathon so it will be Wednesday and Thursday and on Friday there will be an accessibility summit in Mountain View at the computer history museum. So it will be a full week. What we used to do in previous editions of the hackathon it was a competitive one. Since it's two days we might want to rethink the form, but I still think it will be good to come up with a few topics that everyone would be working on. Maybe D3 javascript visualization library for one or Jupiter notebook. We can come up with whatever topics we like. Maybe something around personalizable maps because it will also be sponsored by Lighthouse.
Charles: Will the theme of personalization run through the code sprint?
Volker: it doesn't have to be all about personalization, it's just the topic of this years web4all, but that doesn't rule out other things to work on.
Doug: So we could submit a talk that doesn't have to be on personalization?
Volker: yes, you can always submit anything that's related to web accessibility.
Neil: Is the hackathon at the Lighthouse for the Blind?
Volker: yes, it will be at Lighthouse which is also on Market St. in SF. So pretty close. It's a really nice space. And they can provide us with network support.
Charles: just one note, we aren't sure we will be able to have two and a half days because it's such a full week. So we might not be able to have the brainstorming session, unfortunately. But we will try to set up the repos ahead of time.
Volker: It might be nice if a core group could do an initial set up or brainstorm. There is no time restriction at the Lighthouse. One other thing, there was a concerned raised because two days means the conference will be four days and SF is rather expensive. So that could potentially mean some people might not be there for the second day. So we might want to think about that in case there will be fewer people on the second day.
Charles: Everyone should have gotten an email from Amaya about this to register. Osep will be there so it might be nice to have some demos of the work we've been working on. Does anything come to mind?
Neil: Some of the things we did last year at the sprint would be reasonable to demonstrate, so the PhET stuff.
Sina: visualizaiton and image descritpions.
Doug: If there is any software that implements anything that has come out of DIAGRAM we can demo, that's always really compelling.
Sina: Imageshare and Mathshare come to mind to definitely be demoed.
Charles: Yes, and maybe the annotation stuff that Doug was working on. The stuff that Sina, Evan and I worked on around enhanced image descriptions work. Maybe some of the stuff we worked on at the AIM conference.
Sina: yeah, we can show the roll label stuff. I'd need to circle back with Mick and ask if they have cycles to formalize and get the latest and greatest because that could be cool.
Charles: Maybe some of the stuff Clayton was working on. The Mayan number thing.
Amaya: What about the work with Dash that Richard is working on.
Richard: I would love to, but I have a conflicting meeting. But an old student of mine is now a professor at Macalester and she was the brains behind it. You might be able to get her to come, I can pass along her information.
Sina: That would be great. And maybe the WeScheme stuff too.
Richard: Steffik would be good to have. He could given an awesome demo of some of the things we've been working on. And we just won an award around the code.org work.
Sina: its' the only accessible computer science curriculum in this country and maybe in the world.
Charles: I'm thinking for the DIAGRAM report, I might that add in that information, plus the awards. That would be great.
Sina: the other person who might be very interesting for demo is Annika, Shawn Kane's student.
Charles: We are at about 22 or 23 different examples right now. I only need to get to 25 to hit my goals, so FYI. But seriously, if you have any code examples you would like to showcase I'm happy to put them in there and reference your work. The speech queuing thing would be nice to put in there.
Neil: I had my son and friend do an extension to all the browsers that took Wikipedia pages and took the unaccessible math and rewrote in in MathMl.
Charles: If it's opensource that would be great. I'd love to put that in.
Doug: Microsoft has decided to dump Edge HTML and start transitioning it over to using Chromium which is the browser that is used by Opera and Google for chrome. From what I understand, the Edge browser has not been great for accessibility. So I was wondering if anyone had an opinion on the implications of this for accessibility?
Jason: One to be aware of, is in a recent insider release they noted that it should be fairly easy for screen readers to make use of it. They mentioned potential mobile support and that could be interesting.
Sina: the mobile is Chromium. On Safari when you load Edge and Firefox it's chromium under the hood, though I could be wrong. I think it's great for accessibility, but it's going to be a massive consolidation of web browsers, but it should be far better at accessibility than Edge.
Neil: Sina, you told me Edge went to a different model.
Sina: this is less related to the engine and more about the software is architected. Screen readers behave the way malware does, which is they inject themselves in process. Because of security concerns that model is being pushed back on by browser vendors and manufacturers. So what that means is it will depend less on the engine and more on the Browser.
DIAGRAM Center Website http://diagramcenter.org