Re: FW: wxMaxima accessibility

Leo,

I gave this a quick run with the JAWS screen reader.  Very nice!

I particularly like the combo boxes you set up to choose the type of output.  In an HTML document, one can hit the letter "c" or "shift+c" to quickly move to the next and previous combo boxes, so those are easy to find!

Having the results in a table also made it easy to move to each I/O section.  Normally, in a command-line interface, I would have to arrow up and down a line at a time to find the beginning of each I/O section.  Using the JAWS table navigation functions, this was a breeze.  For example, hitting "T" moves to the beginning of the table.  Then I can easily navigate by a row or column at a time to move from input to output, etc.

The MathML output was also a pleasure to use.  Once one is on a mathML expression using JAWS, one then hits enter to get into MathML navigation mode.  Then hitting up/down arrow moves up or down to the next subexpression, or hitting left/right moves to the previous/next sub-expression.  This makes it easy for a blind person to deal with complex multi-layer and multi-dimensional expressions.  Even the matrix was easy to follow.

Of course the 1D output is also useful and works well.

Note: I couldn't get Narrator to see the MathML expressions in Windows.  Perhaps that is because I am not very familiar with using Narrator.  Not sure if it does support MathML, but that might be my limitation.

Anyway, this seems to work very well with JAWS.  Thanks for the opportunity to test this.

--Pete


-----Original Message-----
From: Leo Butler <[email protected]> 
Sent: Saturday, May 23, 2026 7:51 AM
To: [email protected]
Cc: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [Maxima-discuss] FW: wxMaxima accessibility

Pete,

Would you be willing to try out Yamwi? I am interested in suggestions to improve it with regards to accessibility. It is a web-browser based front-end to Maxima. It displays input in a number of formats, including 1d, and it can display output in MathML (and 1d, amongst others).

You can try a live version at:

https://net124.reltub.ca/yamwi/

Best regards,
Leo


On Fri, May 22 2026, <[email protected]> wrote:

> Gunter,
>
>  
>
> Thanks for giving this a try.  
>
>  
>
> To answer the question for another poster, I assume that this is an 
> attempt to make WX Maxima useable by a blind person (like myself) who 
> uses a screen reader like JAWS (the top commercial screen reader), 
> Narrator *built into Windows), or Voiceover (built into Mac), etc. 
> Such screen readers rely on knowing what text chunks are being sent to 
> various parts of the display (rather than bitmapped images) so that 
> the screen reader can speak the text or display it on a braille 
> display. This is not an easy task for a program that is highly 
> graphical in nature.
>
>  
>
> When I use maxima, I use the command line version and display text in 
> a 1D format since screen readers only speak what is on the current 
> line. The alternative is to use MathML in an HTML window since screen 
> readers can now display MathML very well and enable the user to 
> navigate expressions along with various levels of sub-expressions 
> using MathML. Before I retired as a research scientist at Xerox (many 
> moon ago!) I used to use Maple in a similar fashion – command line 
> mode with 1D expressions (since that was before the time MathML was 
> supported by screen readers).
>
>  
>
> Anyway, I would be curious to give this a shot when you feel it is ready to test.
>
>  
>
> If you remember, you might send me a separate note at:
>
> [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
>
> Since I do not regularly keep up with this list.
>
>  
>
> Thanks and good luck.
>
>  
>
> --Pete
>
>  
>
> From: Gunter Königsmann <[email protected] 
> <mailto:[email protected]> >
> Sent: Wednesday, May 20, 2026 3:09 AM
> To: [email protected] 
> <mailto:[email protected]> ; [email protected] 
> <mailto:[email protected]>
> Subject: wxMaxima accessibility
>
>  
>
> Dear all,
>
> No idea if that will work out, but - a few years ago I tried to add accessibility to wxMaxima, but to no avail.
>
> Now a colleague of mine has convinced me to try an AI abonnement. The 
> AI cannot really test it - at least on my computer, but I wanted to 
> announce that one of the first jobs I am giving to the AI is to try 
> again to add accessibility to wxMaxima. The result was loads of code 
> changes. Currently a different AI model is trying to review that code. 
> With a big bit of luck tomorrow's Nightly Build will actually provide 
> some accessibility. If it does any feedback you send me will be 
> forwarded to the AI that will try to improve things.
>
> My current impression is:
>
> *	AI is no silver bullet.
> *	It tends to try to convince you that it did a good job. If the summary focusses on how good that job was - it often knows it didn't manage to make it work and hopes you'll never test.
> *	If it doesn't find a bug it might just do random changes to the code hoping that will help, but
> *	it is excellent at some jobs human beings aren't good at,
> *	it has resolved many problems I've been trying to resolve for years and
> *	sometimes finding a solution is an iterative task when dealing with an AI - as it is when dealing with human beings.
>
> Kind regards,
>
>   Gunter.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Maxima-discuss mailing list
> [email protected]
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/maxima-discuss
>

--
---
Best regards,
Dr Butler



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