Math Digital Accessibility
The quickest and easiest way for an instructor to get small documents (e.g., homework solutions) available to students in an accessible format is to use the MathJax support in Canvas. UW–Madison’s Canvas instance has the MathJax components enabled by default. You won't be able to use custom LaTeX macros when using this route, but doing some find and replace in your original source document (in, for example, Overleaf) should be able to solve that for you. (MathJax loads most of the AMS LaTeX packages by default, so you have most of what folks would consider the necessary basic commands.)
Putting math content into a Canvas page (or basically any text box one can write in on Canvas, including announcements, quizzes, etc.) is as simple as marking the mathematical content with the appropriate delimiters.
- For inline math, instead of using $ax^2+bx+c=0$ as you are probably accustomed to doing in TeX or LaTeX, type \(ax^2+bx+c=0\).
- For displayed math, if you usually use $$ around your math content, you will need to use \[ before and \] afterward:
\[x=\frac{-b\pm\sqrt{b^2-4ac}}{2a}\] will render your math centered on its own line.
Canvas generally handles <, >, and &, which are special characters in HTML and necessary in mathematics (or LaTeX source) smoothly, but you can also type \lt for <, \gt for >, and \amp for & to avoid issues.
If you wish to use slightly more complicated things like an align* environment, the key thing to know is that you need to type shift+return at the end of each line rather than just hitting return. (If you copy/paste from a LaTeX file/Overleaf project, as long as you don't leave any blank lines inside your align* environment, you will be fine.)
Find and Replace for $'s
If your LaTeX document uses $ and $$ for math delimiters instead of Canvas's expected \( and \) for inline math and \[ and \] for display math, Eric Meitner has some suggested find and replace that you can use in Overleaf. To activate Overleaf's find and replace, click the magnifying glass icon above the editing panel or press ctrl+F (on Windows/Linux) or command+F (on Mac).
To address most of your inline math, you must click the [.*] button to enable regular expression searches and then do
Search: (?<!\$)\$(?!\$)(.+?)(?<!\\)\$
Replace: \($1\)
To address most of your display math, you must click the [.*] button to enable regular expression searches and then do
Search: \$\$(.+?)(?<!\\)\$\$
Replace: \[$1\]
If you have a math environment that occurs across multiple lines, these replacements will not work. However, doing these replacements should leave you with only a few spots to clean up by hand, so then you can click the [.*] button again to disable regular expression searches and then search for any remaining $'s so that you can edit accordingly.