Making materials more accessible helps everyone. For example, using voice assistants, automatic doors, audiobooks, ergonomic technology are all examples of accessible design. In addition, MSU and all public institutions are required by law to make their educational experiences accessible, including to people with disabilities.
This overview is meant to serve as a brief guide to the issue and give you some recommendations for how to improve your accessibility with teaching documents that contain mathematical equations.
A common equation production for equations is LaTex, but in order for those to be accessible, those writings may have to go through a translation technology to become accessible. This takes much more time, resources, and energy to retrofit.
Instead, it saves educators time, resources, and energy to compose in an accessible production technology, such as MS Word, from the beginning.
Educators should strive to compose in a production technology that allows for the most accessible outputs. Faculty and staff who are looking to make accessible documents should consider composing (or re-writing) equations into MS Word.
There are several centrally supported tools at MSU that integrate into MS Word for accessible equation creation. For example, an educator might use the MathType add-in for MS Word. Because it can import LaTex equations and translate those to multiple, accessible outputs, it reduces the load on educators to update their materials.
Ideally, faculty and staff should create a workflow that allows their work to be accessible by its nature, where it does not need further processing by the faculty, staff, or students to be accessible. We realize that different disciplines’ culture of technology and publishing may drive inaccessible practices, but identifying this goal and moving towards it at any opportunity will not only help those with disabilities but will also increase the dissemination of intellectual work more broadly, which is ultimately tied to our mission as an institution of higher learning.