{"id":7055,"date":"2022-02-23T11:39:38","date_gmt":"2022-02-23T11:39:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/digital-learning\/?p=7055"},"modified":"2023-05-31T13:58:48","modified_gmt":"2023-05-31T12:58:48","slug":"stem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/digital-learning\/2022\/02\/23\/stem\/","title":{"rendered":"Reflection: ATHEN STEM Conference: Starting with Math"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Recently, I attended a two-day conference where experts shared their best practices, solutions and techniques, for accessing and creating accessible STEM content in higher education. This conference will inform strategies for creating accessible STEM content. The event started at 05:00 PM, so after a day\u2019s work, I made myself a hot drink, grabbed my notebook and launched Zoom to join the conference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Opening keynote: Arbitrarily Close to Access in STEM<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The starting keynote was a presentation by the accessibility Zach Lattin. Zach shared with us his lived experience of navigating mathematics in higher education as a blind reader. Zach\u2019s main theme for the keynote was that even if we do not reach 100% accessible content we can get arbitrarily close to making it accessible.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"A
A graph showing the threshold for accessible content. <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Accessible content creation is at the forefront of universal design for learning practices. It is critical to provide alternative formats without these being manufactured behind the request for accessible materials. As Zach puts it, \u201cIf a student is asking for accessible content, it is already too late to ensure the student has equal access<\/strong>.\u201d This is particularly important since students with impairments are still rejected. Zach shared that a peer of his was rejected from joining a class. This was on the basis that the academic team thought that they would slow the class down. Zach spoke with clarity that not only is it more difficult for learners with impairments to gain the same level of access to learning, but once they have access to learn, institutions fail to support learners.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The primary lesson learnt from this keynote was that institutions that adopt UDL principles<\/a> are more likely to reach the arbitrarily close to accessible STEM status.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Session one: Enhancing server-side MathJax rendering with common ARIA patterns to provide robust, richly accessible equation layout at scale<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The first session I attended was quite technical. The presenter, Peter Krautzberger is a computer scientist and a former manager at the MathJax Consortium. MathJax is a web-based solution that creates, scalable and accessible math content. The session detailed how machine learning can be implemented to improve the automatic rendering of math objects, graphs and 2D models. In addition to detailing workflow processes for populating ARIA trees<\/a> with heuristic information. This enables objects and their parts to be explored and helps users of assistive technologies to comprehend complex components.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"An
An ARIA tree-map of an equation.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

This was a fascinating demonstration. Peter showed how each term in an equation can be interacted with. By using the ARIA map to explore the hierarchy in the math content. ARIA mapping technology has been implemented in the American Mathematical Society\u2019s article repository.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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