Description: For many years there has been a push for moving teaching and research content online in a form that goes beyond just linking print versions of documents. The COVID pandemic has only accelerated this trend, forcing all faculty to focus on how to deliver courses online. However, hastily moving material online bears the risk that important accessibility considerations are neglected, threatening fair and inclusive education for all. This is especially true for mathematics and other STEM fields where complex structures such as equations and diagrams play an integral role. In this webinar we will advocate that in addition to moving content online quickly, instructors can use best practices developed for authors to ensure accessibility of math content from the start, thus avoiding additional and duplicate work.

Our presentation shall give an overview of different requirements on presentation and content for students and readers with special needs and how assistive technology support can be provided. We shall particularly concentrate on what this means for math content and how it is made accessible on the web. We argue that the web is the ideal platform for hosting and curating modern content regardless of their original sources like LaTeX, Word, or plain text. And we will demonstrate how accessibility can be practically a free byproduct of conversion from traditionally authored content. In conclusion we discuss ways of authoring, preparing, and teaching accessible web documents containing mathematics, highlighting some of the best practices.

Presented by Prof. Volker Sorge, University of Birmingham, UK & MathJax Consortium

Time:   July 13, 2020 02:00 PM in Eastern Time (US and Canada)

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