[texhax] ldots, cdots, ddots, binom, blah, blah, [blind]

P. R. Stanley prstanley at ntlworld.com
Wed Mar 11 03:35:11 CET 2009


Hi folks,
A few comments:
1. "raw LaTeX" is by far the most accessible format. The information 
in a source file conveys exactly what appears in visual form in the 
PDF or the DVI. Moreover, there's nothing more liberating than 
producing professional quality documents with no sight.

2. To the best of my knowledge the law in England and Wales 
stipulates that the conversion of published materials into a format 
suitable for the blind or, people with other disabilities, is 
permissible so long as the converted materials are used for academic 
or generally non-commercial purposes.

3. I should forget PDF or, worse still, DVI. PDF specially is the 
opposite of everything raw LaTeX offers the blind.

No matter how much progress is made by the developers of screen 
readers somehow PDF remains less than accessible. It's a bit like 
failed relationship in which one partner tries to win the other back 
with expensive gifts.

Regards
Paul
At 21:46 10/03/2009, you wrote:


>Barbara Beeton wrote:
>
> > the texbook file has no special facilities for
> > making it "accessible" in any meaningful way
> > as a pdf file, and i've decoded enough dvi files
> > to not wish that on anyone who's never tried to
> > do it before.  that leaves the file texbook.tex
> > itself for inspection via an editor with voice
> > output. and there's certainly no prohibition
> > against that.
> >
> > would that not be a viable approach, if not
> > exactly trivial?
>
>Well, I defer to those with direct experience of screen
>readers and similar, but I would have /thought/ that
>the result of PdfTeX'ing "texbook.tex" would result
>in a document that is considerably more accessible
>than the raw source.  Are there any screen-reader
>users who could comment more informedly on this ?
>
>** Phil.
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