MathML has been successful in improving the accessibility of mathematical notation on the web. All major screen readers support MathML to generate speech, allow navigation of the math, and generate braille. A troublesome area remains: handling ambiguous notations such as \( \vert x\vert\). While it is possible to speak this syntactically, anecdotal evidence indicates most people prefer semantic speech such as ``absolute value of x'' or ``determinant of x'' instead of ``vertical bar x vertical bar'' when first hearing an expression. Several heuristics to infer semantics have improved speech, but ultimately, the author is the one who definitively knows how an expression is meant to be spoken. The W3C Math Working Group is in the process of allowing authors to convey their intent in MathML markup via an intent attribute. This paper describes that work.

翻译：MathML在提高网络数学符号可访问性方面取得了成功。所有主流屏幕阅读器都支持MathML生成语音、允许数学内容导航及生成盲文。但仍存在一个棘手领域：处理如\( \vert x\vert\)等歧义符号。虽然可以通过语法方式朗读该表达式，但实际经验表明多数人在首次听到表达式时更倾向于语义化朗读（如"x的绝对值"或"x的行列式"），而非"竖杠x竖杠"。现有若干推断语义的启发式方法已改善了朗读效果，但最终只有作者能确切知晓表达式应如何朗读。W3C数学工作组正致力于通过intent属性使作者能在MathML标记中传达其意图。本文阐述了这项工作的进展。