The importance of accessible practice for maths and diagrams

Some students might require assistive technology in order to access maths and complex images. To ensure it is accessible for students who use assistive technology it’s important to be mindful of how you create maths equations, tables, arrays, matrices, graphs and other complex images. 

Students who are blind or have low vision require one or more types of assistive technology to access online mathematical content. Most people who are blind access online content via a screen reader like NVDA or JAWS (Windows), or VoiceOver (Mac). Screen readers must usually be paired with a specific browser to read maths content (e.g. Safari and Voiceover on Mac) or may even require additional software (e.g. Firefox, NVDA and MathPlayer on Windows). 

Students with low vision may use magnifier software like ZoomText (Windows), Magnifier (Windows) or Accessibility Zoom (Mac) alone or in combination with a screen reader. 

Students affected by Dyscalculia may use Read and Write software to read mathematical content aloud. Dyscalculia is a learning disability that does not affect a person’s sight. People affected by Dyscalculia will likely have adequate vision but learn more effectively when content is spoken instead of written. Read and Write works well in combination with most browsers on Windows and Mac. 

Accessible maths content falls into four general categories that need different approaches to being accessible: 

Equations pose particular problems for screen reader software, especially if they are contained within PDF, Word and PowerPoint files, or uploaded as images. Websites that display equations using MathML provide a better user experience for all users. Find out more about options for accessible equations. 

Poorly constructed tables can be hard to read with a screen reader, but providing structure like column and/or row headers and captions can turn what looks like random data into a coherent whole for a screen reader user. 

The Canvas Accessibility Checker makes adding headers and captions easy when creating simple tables (e.g. tables with a single header each for columns and rows). Tables with complex layouts (e.g. tables with multi-level headers) can only be made accessible by manual HTML editing. Please contact the LX.Lab for advice on complex table layouts if required. 

Screen readers read matrices and arrays in similar way to tables. Matrices created using LaTeX code in the Canvas Math Editor can be automatically read by a screen reader. 

These methods of presenting data provide different accessibility challenges depending on the accessibility requirements of the user.  

There are several things you can do to make graphs, charts and diagrams accessible. Firstly, create high-contrast graphs, charts and diagrams that don’t rely on colour alone for meaning, but have labels or patterns. This is important for students who have colour vision deficiency or low vision. Secondly, write meaningful alternative text for students who are blind and use screen readers and add image descriptions if there is substantial information conveyed by the image.