[accessibility] Making PDFs produced from Latex accessible - part 2
Ross Moore
ross.moore at mq.edu.au
Fri Dec 9 02:01:37 CET 2016
Begin forwarded message:
From: Boris Veytsman <borisv at lk.net<mailto:borisv at lk.net>>
Date: 4 November 2016 4:32:02 AM AEDT
To: Volker Sorge <volker.sorge at gmail.com<mailto:volker.sorge at gmail.com>>
Cc: <ross.moore at mq.edu.au<mailto:ross.moore at mq.edu.au>>, <jbigham at cs.cmu.edu<mailto:jbigham at cs.cmu.edu>>, <karl at freefriends.org<mailto:karl at freefriends.org>>
Subject: Re: Making PDFs produced from Latex accessible
VS> From: Volker Sorge <volker.sorge at gmail.com<mailto:volker.sorge at gmail.com>>
VS> Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2016 09:51:26 -0700
VS> Having said that, I am still hoping that we can come up with a pragmatic
VS> initial solution, and find funding for it, that will help authors with some
VS> of the most important tasks, i.e., using the Google credo: "get out a beta
VS> asap and then iterate". I think this is better achieved by a small group of
VS> people, than on a public mailing list, which might dilute discussions.
Ross, Volker, could you estimate the funding needs? I cannot promise
anything, but if I had a number, I could start talking to the
publishers.
If you could write a one page summary for non-technical people: here
is what we plan to do, here is how much money we need, this would
help.
--
Good luck
-Boris
Nothing is rich but the inexhaustible wealth of nature.
She shows us only surfaces, but she is a million fathoms deep.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Begin forwarded message:
From: Volker Sorge <volker.sorge at gmail.com<mailto:volker.sorge at gmail.com>>
Date: 4 November 2016 3:51:26 AM AEDT
To: Ross Moore <ross.moore at mq.edu.au<mailto:ross.moore at mq.edu.au>>
Cc: Boris Veytsman <borisv at lk.net<mailto:borisv at lk.net>>, Jeffrey Bigham <jbigham at cs.cmu.edu<mailto:jbigham at cs.cmu.edu>>, Karl Berry <karl at freefriends.org<mailto:karl at freefriends.org>>
Subject: Re: Making PDFs produced from Latex accessible
Hi Ross,
Thanks for the detailed explanations. Sorry for not replying earlier, but I have been travelling since the weekend (currently stationary in Oregon until Sunday).
I agree that the I am happy with putting the discussion so far on the mailing list; all the points you've made should be properly archived.
Having said that, I am still hoping that we can come up with a pragmatic initial solution, and find funding for it, that will help authors with some of the most important tasks, i.e., using the Google credo: "get out a beta asap and then iterate". I think this is better achieved by a small group of people, than on a public mailing list, which might dilute discussions.
As for a f2f: Would some time next week work? I could do Tuesday, Thursday or Friday.
Best,
Volker
On 30 October 2016 at 18:10, Ross Moore <ross.moore at mq.edu.au<mailto:ross.moore at mq.edu.au>> wrote:
Hi Jeff, Volker, Karl
On 31 Oct 2016, at 11:14, Boris Veytsman <borisv at lk.net<mailto:borisv at lk.net>> wrote:
RM> From: Ross Moore <ross.moore at mq.edu.au<mailto:ross.moore at mq.edu.au>>
RM> Date: Sun, 30 Oct 2016 21:40:29 +0000
RM> BTW, if you want to switch this discussion to the TUG Accessibility WG,
RM> then do so. Jeff and Volker could then sign up to it.
RM> (Karl probably is already. :-)
I certainly would like to. If you could forward the previous e-mail
to the list, we would have a history of the discussion
Is it OK with you, Jeff & Volker, that the emails prior to this
be recorded in the TUG WG mailing-list archive?
Then they will be accessible (sic.) to more interested parties.
http://tug.org/mailman/listinfo/accessibility
http://tug.org/pipermail/accessibility/
http://www.tug.org/twg/accessibility/
Please respond with a yah or nay, within the next day or two.
Thanks
--
Good luck
-Boris
Cheers
Ross
Dr Ross Moore
Mathematics Dept | Level 2, S2.638 AHH
Macquarie University, NSW 2109, Australia
T: +61 2 9850 8955<tel:%2B61%202%209850%C2%A08955> | F: +61 2 9850 8114<tel:%2B61%202%209850%208114>
M:+61 407 288 255<tel:%2B61%20407%20288%20255> | E: ross.moore at mq.edu.au<mailto:ross.moore at mq.edu.au>
http://www.maths.mq.edu.au<http://www.maths.mq.edu.au/>
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Begin forwarded message:
From: Ross Moore <ross.moore at mq.edu.au<mailto:ross.moore at mq.edu.au>>
Date: 31 October 2016 12:10:40 PM AEDT
To: Boris Veytsman <borisv at lk.net<mailto:borisv at lk.net>>
Cc: Volker Sorge <volker.sorge at gmail.com<mailto:volker.sorge at gmail.com>>, Jeffrey Bigham <jbigham at cs.cmu.edu<mailto:jbigham at cs.cmu.edu>>, Karl Berry <karl at freefriends.org<mailto:karl at freefriends.org>>
Subject: Re: Making PDFs produced from Latex accessible
Hi Jeff, Volker, Karl
On 31 Oct 2016, at 11:14, Boris Veytsman <borisv at lk.net<mailto:borisv at lk.net>> wrote:
RM> From: Ross Moore <ross.moore at mq.edu.au<mailto:ross.moore at mq.edu.au>>
RM> Date: Sun, 30 Oct 2016 21:40:29 +0000
RM> BTW, if you want to switch this discussion to the TUG Accessibility WG,
RM> then do so. Jeff and Volker could then sign up to it.
RM> (Karl probably is already. :-)
I certainly would like to. If you could forward the previous e-mail
to the list, we would have a history of the discussion
Is it OK with you, Jeff & Volker, that the emails prior to this
be recorded in the TUG WG mailing-list archive?
Then they will be accessible (sic.) to more interested parties.
http://tug.org/mailman/listinfo/accessibility
http://tug.org/pipermail/accessibility/
http://www.tug.org/twg/accessibility/
Please respond with a yah or nay, within the next day or two.
Thanks
--
Good luck
-Boris
Cheers
Ross
Dr Ross Moore
Mathematics Dept | Level 2, S2.638 AHH
Macquarie University, NSW 2109, Australia
T: +61 2 9850 8955 | F: +61 2 9850 8114
M:+61 407 288 255 | E: ross.moore at mq.edu.au<mailto:ross.moore at mq.edu.au>
http://www.maths.mq.edu.au
[cid:image001.png at 01D030BE.D37A46F0]
CRICOS Provider Number 00002J. Think before you print.
Please consider the environment before printing this email.
This message is intended for the addressee named and may
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recipient, please delete it and notify the sender. Views expressed
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Begin forwarded message:
From: Boris Veytsman <borisv at lk.net<mailto:borisv at lk.net>>
Date: 31 October 2016 11:14:41 AM AEDT
To: Ross Moore <ross.moore at mq.edu.au<mailto:ross.moore at mq.edu.au>>
Cc: <volker.sorge at gmail.com<mailto:volker.sorge at gmail.com>>, <jbigham at cs.cmu.edu<mailto:jbigham at cs.cmu.edu>>, <karl at freefriends.org<mailto:karl at freefriends.org>>
Subject: Re: Making PDFs produced from Latex accessible
RM> From: Ross Moore <ross.moore at mq.edu.au<mailto:ross.moore at mq.edu.au>>
RM> Date: Sun, 30 Oct 2016 21:40:29 +0000
RM> BTW, if you want to switch this discussion to the TUG Accessibility WG,
RM> then do so. Jeff and Volker could then sign up to it.
RM> (Karl probably is already. :-)
I certainly would like to. If you could forward the previous e-mail
to the list, we would have a history of the discussion
Thanks
--
Good luck
-Boris
We know all about the habits of the ant, we know all about the habits of the
bee, but we know nothing at all about the habits of the oyster. It seems
almost certain that we have been choosing the wrong time for studying the
oyster.
-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
Begin forwarded message:
From: Ross Moore <ross.moore at mq.edu.au<mailto:ross.moore at mq.edu.au>>
Date: 31 October 2016 8:40:28 AM AEDT
To: Boris Veytsman <borisv at lk.net<mailto:borisv at lk.net>>
Cc: <volker.sorge at gmail.com<mailto:volker.sorge at gmail.com>>, <jbigham at cs.cmu.edu<mailto:jbigham at cs.cmu.edu>>, Karl Berry <karl at freefriends.org<mailto:karl at freefriends.org>>
Subject: Re: Making PDFs produced from Latex accessible
Hi Boris,
On 31 Oct 2016, at 05:02, Boris Veytsman <borisv at lk.net<mailto:borisv at lk.net>> wrote:
Hi, Ross
Thanks for your very interesting letter. I am glad to hear you are
working on this. Let me know if you need any help in testing,
development or funding.
I would like to discuss another use case, which is relevant to my
work. Consider a LaTeX class author. Suppose she wants to make a
class that produces accessible PDFs. As a document class author, she
has much better control than the document author: for example, she can
put any tag code in the headers and footers, can plug into output
routine, can expressly forbid loading packages incompatible with the
accessibility code, etc. Thus an accessibility package with the
interface for class authors might be simpler to make than an
accessibility package with the interface for document authors.
Certainly a class-file is better than a package, as it gets loaded sooner.
Ideally, most of the work would be done using macros defined within
a format file; e.g. taggedLaTeX.fmt .
But that’s something for the future, after we have stable, bullet-proof coding.
Yes, a tagged PDF file can be created using ordinary LaTeX only,
involving heavy use of \pdfobj , \pdfobj useobjnum<num> and \pdfliteral
plus masses of macros to store the structure tree and object-numbers,
until all the siblings and parents of each structure element is known.
The resulting document would be like a form to be filled out.
All the fields are pre-determined, and only appropriately-styled information
would be allowed to be entered into those fields.
Page-breaks would have to be tightly controlled; indeed pre-determined.
Paragraphing might be possible in some fields, especially if \par (or similar)
was used explicitly. Style-changes such as bold and/or italic can be
programmed and tagged, but this would be hard to merge with the
pre-defined structure — extra list-like macros would be needed to ensure
these spans of content get properly attached as leaves to <PARA> tagging.
That the appropriate metadata would be supplied via the pdfx.sty package
goes pretty-much without saying.
I think you’ll find that River Valley creates tagged PDFs for publishers
who request it (e.g., Elsevier).
But this is done by having tight control of the pagination.
Once an acceptable full pagination is determined, then it gets frozen for
subsequent processing. Now the \pdfobj object numbers get stored,
and the structure tree determined and added afterwards.
It’s a multi-step process that only someone like a pre-Press house
(as they are) would invest the time into using.
Certainly this is beyond what individual authors could manage.
My understanding (from several years ago) is that they tag large
areas of the page content, rather than go into detailed sub-tagging
of structures within paragraphs. I’m not at all sure of the extent
to which inline mathematical content is tagged.
I would suggest releasing such package first, so document class
authors could use and test the code. What do you think?
Documents that use this would need to follow a very strict set
of rules for the type of content, and how it is handled.
Making examples that use this approach could be useful,
but certainly cannot be fully general.
We could then learn the kinds of things that can and cannot
be done easily, and establish some document-authoring macros
that could become common across classes of documents.
Perhaps that’s what I’ll try for Mathematics exam papers,
before adapting to have the tagging done automatically using
the extended tagged-pdftex.
This is definitely a setting where you want such control over
content and layout.
--
Good luck
-Boris
Numeric stability is probably not all that important when you're guessing.
BTW, if you want to switch this discussion to the TUG Accessibility WG,
then do so. Jeff and Volker could then sign up to it.
(Karl probably is already. :-)
Cheers
Ross
Dr Ross Moore
Mathematics Dept | Level 2, S2.638 AHH
Macquarie University, NSW 2109, Australia
T: +61 2 9850 8955 | F: +61 2 9850 8114
M:+61 407 288 255 | E: ross.moore at mq.edu.au<mailto:ross.moore at mq.edu.au>
http://www.maths.mq.edu.au
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recipient, please delete it and notify the sender. Views expressed
in this message are those of the individual sender, and are not
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