[accessibility] An interesting discussion on SX

[Kevin Fjelsted]

Wonderful! I will take a look at this in the next few days!
-Kevin


> On May 27, 2019, at 10:19 AM, Anna Capietto <anna.capietto at unito.it> wrote:
> 
> Dear Kevin, I am responsible for the Laboratory for research and experimentation with novel assistive technologies for STEM "S.Polin", at the Department of Mathematics of the University of Torino, Italy. Our website is
> 
> http://www.integr-abile.unito.it/en/ <http://www.integr-abile.unito.it/en/>.
> 
> In 2018 we have developed the LaTeX package Axessibility, which enables a user of screen reader/braille display to access the LaTeX code of a pdf (coming from LaTeX). We also have dictionaries for Jaws and NVDA.
> 
> In case you are interested, you may have a look at the web page
> 
> http://www.integr-abile.unito.it/en/axessibility/ <http://www.integr-abile.unito.it/en/axessibility/>
> 
> Please feel free to contact us through this email for any question/comment. We are eager to obtain feedbacks from users like you.
> 
> Cordially
> Anna
> 
> 
> 
> Il giorno sab 18 mag 2019 alle ore 15:31 Kevin Fjelsted <kfjelsted at gmail.com <mailto:kfjelsted at gmail.com>> ha scritto:
> It would seem to me that since Latex is so structured already that converting to a Tased PDF should be very automatic? I am writing this observation without knowledge of the internals. One of the other problems with the PDF accessibility conundrum, is that screen reader software does not necessarily present accessible PDFS well at any rate. This is especially true for Mac Preview. Again, it would seem that Latex could shine at this because of the highly structure nature of the document source! For instance it is always clear when there is a table. Math equations that are written in Latex are truly known to be math equations, not much guess work as to the content type?
> I ask these questions from a challenge perspective.
> As a BLind person who has used Latex for my entire undergraduate document production experience in CSCI and now as a graduate student in the MBA program, Latex is truly a dream come true for formatting control. This is purely because of the command source approach where everything is distilled down to the creation of text. Text is quite manageable by screen reading software.
> 
> Let’s take another point of view however: We also need accessible Braille to be available from Latex. Braille is complex composed of lots of formatting rules and two major codes, one for math and one for literal text. This doesn’t even cover graphics yet. Since joining this accessibility list I don’t believe I have seen any discussion of the overall accessibility issues i.e., we should have two views Braille and screen reader and they should be able to be generated out of the same document source!
> How does one proceed to understand what projects are active in this context?
> -Kevin
> 
> > On May 16, 2019, at 6:54 PM, Boris Veytsman <borisv at lk.net <mailto:borisv at lk.net>> wrote:
> > 
> > There is an ongoing discussion at TeX.sx about accessibility:
> > https://tex.stackexchange.com/q/491162 <https://tex.stackexchange.com/q/491162>.  
> > 
> > -- 
> > Good luck
> > 
> > -Boris
> > 
> > Brady's First Law of Problem Solving:
> >       When confronted by a difficult problem, you can solve it more
> >       easily by reducing it to the question, "How would the Lone Ranger
> >       have handled this?"
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Anna Capietto
> Prof. ordinario di Analisi Matematica
> Responsabile del Laboratorio per la ricerca e la 
> sperimentazione di nuove tecnologie assisitve per le STEM "S.Polin"
> Referente per la disabilità nel
> Dipartimento di Matematica "G.Peano"
> Università di Torino
> http://www.integr-abile.unito.it/ <http://www.integr-abile.unito.it/>
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