Re: FW: wxMaxima accessibility

Hello Pete,

Thank you for the feedback. I am glad the design works well with the
JAWS screen reader.

Best regards,
Leo


On Sat, May 23 2026, <[email protected]> wrote:

> 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
>

-- 
---
Best regards,
Dr Butler
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