PDF accessibility and PDF standards

This page collects the information about the development of the methods to create PDF documents with TeX according to PDF/UA accessibility standards, and other emerging PDF standards.

Working group mailing list - an open list; feel free to subscribe, peruse the public archives, etc.

PDF accessibility standards available at no cost.

If you are a developer: grants available

If you are a developer working on accessibility-related issues, we welcome your application for a grant (we don't have vast resources, but hopefully enough to be useful). Please submit the application at the TUG development fund, and mention accessbility in the project description.

TeX VPAT statement

A TeX Accessibility Conformance Report can be found in the package tex-vpat. Currently it covers only the TeX Live distribution; we invite developers to add statements for other distributions and packages.

Some relevant web pages

CTAN packages

  1. CTAN topic accessible
  2. tagpdf - Code for PDF tagging using pdfLaTeX and LuaLaTeX
  3. pdfx - PDF/X-1a and PDF/A-1b support for pdfTeX
  4. pdfcomment - A user-friendly interface to pdf annotations
  5. glossaries-accsupp - Accessibility support for glossaries
  6. axessibility - Accessibility for formulas in PDF files
  7. accsupp - Better accessibility support for PDF files

Selected papers and talks

  1. TUGboat topic accessibility—ongoing collection. TUGboat submissions are welcome.
  2. arXiv 2024 accessibility forum videos.
  3. Mittelbach, Frank, and Fischer, Ulrike. Enhancing LaTeX to automatically produce tagged and accessible PDF. TUGboat 45:1, 2024.
  4. Kortemeyer, Gerd. Using artificial-intelligence tools to make LaTeX content accessible to blind readers. TUGboat 44:3, 2023.
  5. Carlisle, David and Fischer, Ulrike and Mittelbach, Frank. Report on the LaTeX Tagged PDF workshop, TUG 2023. TUGboat 44:2, 2023.
  6. Fischer, Ulrike and Mittelbach, Frank. Automated tagging of LaTeX documents-what is possible today, in 2023?. TUGboat 44:2, 2023.
  7. Moore, Ross Enhancing accessibility of structured information via ‘Tagged PDF’. TUGboat 44:2, 2023.
  8. Fischer, Ulrike and Mittelbach, Frank. Adding XMP metadata in LaTeX. TUGboat 43:3, 2022.
  9. Mittelbach, Frank, and Fischer, Ulrike. The LaTeX Tagged PDF project—A status and progress report. TUGboat 43:3, 2022. (tagpdf package on CTAN.)
  10. Papasalouros, Andreas, and Tsolomitis, Antonis. latex2nemeth: A direct LaTeX-to-Braille transcribing tool. TUGboat 43:3, 2022. (latex2nemeth package on CTAN.) Videos.
  11. Fischer, Ulrike. On the road to Tagged PDF: About StructElem, Marked Content, PDF/A and Squeezed Bärs. TUGboat 42:2, 2021.
  12. Papasalouros, Andreas, and Tsolomitis, Antonis. latex2nemeth: A direct LaTeX-to-Braille transcribing tool. TUGboat 42:2, 2021.
  13. Veytsman, Boris, and Harcombe, Kieran. Creating a VPAT statement for TeX Live. TUGboat 42:2, 2021.
  14. Fischer, Ulrike. Creating accessible pdfs with LaTeX. TUGboat 41:1, 2020.
  15. Moore, Ross. Semantic Enrichment of Mathematics via `tooltips', preprint, 2015, tug.org/preprints/moore-mathsem-cicm2015-v7.pdf (see also the full paper in CICM 2015 Proceedings and supporting materials)
  16. Moore, Ross. Tagged Mathematics in PDFs for Accessibility and other purposes, in CICM-WS-WiP 2013, Workshops and Work in Progress at CICM, CEUR Workshops Proceedings. http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1010/paper-01.pdf.
  17. Moore, Ross R. PDF/A-3u as an archival format for Accessible mathematics, in S.M. Watt et al. (Eds.): CICM 2014, LNAI 8543, pp. 184–199, 2014. https://arxiv.org/abs/1406.6126.
  18. Moore, Ross R. Ongoing efforts to generate ``tagged PDF'' using pdfTeX, TUGboat, 30:2, 170--175, 2009, tug.org/TUGboat/tb30-2/tb95moore.pdf.
    Also: Moore, Ross R.; Ongoing efforts to generate “tagged PDF” using pdfTeX, in DML 2009, Towards a digital Mathematics Library, Proceedings, Petr Sojka (editor), Muni Press, Masaryk University, 2009. ISBN 978-80-20-4781-5.
  19. Kohlhase, M. Using LaTeX as a Semantic Markup Format in Mathematics in Computer Science (2:2) pp. 279–304. Birkhäuser (2008).
  20. Groza, T., Handschuh S., Möller, K., Decker, S. SALT — semantically annotated LaTeX for scientific publications. ESWC, number 4519 pp. 518–532. Springer (2007).

Videos

  1. Sandro Coriasco, Anna Capieto, An automated method based on LaTeX for the realization of accessible PDF documents containing formulae. TUG'18. Video of the talk. Slides. Voiceover. NVDA & JAWS.
  2. Ross Moore, Authoring accessible Tagged PDF documents using LaTeX. TUG'18. Video.
  3. Ross Moore, Semantic enrichment of mathematics using `active comments' TUG'15. http://river-valley.zeeba.tv/semantic-enrichment-of-mathematics-using-%E2%80%98active-comments%E2%80%99/.
  4. Ross Moore, `Fake spaces' with pdftex — best of both worlds, TUG'14. http://river-valley.zeeba.tv/%E2%80%9Cfake-spaces%E2%80%9D-with-pdftex%E2%80%94best-of-both-worlds/.
  5. Ross Moore, Further advances toward Tagged pdf for mathematics, TUG'11. http://river-valley.zeeba.tv/further-advances-toward-tagged-pdf-for-mathematics/.
  6. Ross Moore, TeX + MathML for Tagged PDF, the next frontier in mathematical typesetting, TUG'10. http://river-valley.zeeba.tv/tex-mathml-for-tagged-pdf-the-next-frontier-in-mathematical-typesetting/.
  7. Ross Moore, Towards Tagged PDF, TUG'09. http://river-valley.zeeba.tv/towards-tagged-pdf/.
  8. Talks and discussions at TUG 2019 (Palo Alto, USA).

PDF standards

  1. Adobe Systems Inc.; PDF Reference 1.7, November 2006. http://www.adobe.com/devnet/pdf/pdf_reference.html.
  2. Dublin Core Metadata Element Set, Version 1.1, October 2010. http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/
  3. 4th International PDF/A Conference Proceedings, October 2010. http://www.pdfa.org/publication/4th-international-pdfa-conference-pdfa-forever/
  4. Olaf Drümmer and Bettina Chang. PDF/UA in a Nutshell, August 2013. http://www.pdfa.org/publication/pdfua-in-a-nutshell/
  5. PDF Association. Official PDF Flyer, December 2013. http://www.pdfa.org/publication/official-pdf-flyer-english/
  6. The Matterhorn Protocol 1.02. PDF/UA Conformance Testing Model, April 2014. http://www.pdfa.org/publication/the-matterhorn-protocol-1/

ISO standards

  1. ISO 19005-1:2005; Document Management — Electronic document file format for long term preservation — Part 1: Use of PDF 1.4 (PDF/A-1); Technical Committee ISO/TC 171/SC 2 (Sept. 2005). Revisions via Corrigenda: ISO 19005-1:2005/Cor 1:2007 (March 2007); ISO 19005-1:2005/Cor 2:2011 (Dec. 2011).
    http://www.iso.org/iso/catalogue_detail?csnumber=38920.
  2. ISO 19005-2:2011; Document Management — Electronic document file format for long term preservation — Part 2: Use of ISO 32000-1 (PDF/A-2); Technical Committee ISO/TC 171/SC 2 (June 2011). http://www.iso.org/iso/catalogue_detail?csnumber=50655.
  3. ISO 19005-3:2012; Document Management — Electronic document file format for long term preservation — Part 3: Use of ISO 32000-1 with support for embedded files (PDF/A-3); Technical Committee ISO/TC 171/SC 2 (October 2012).
    http://www.iso.org/iso/catalogue_detail?csnumber=57229.
  4. ISO 32000-1:2008; Document management — Portable document format (PDF 1.7); Technical Committee ISO/TC 171/SC 2 (July 2008). Also available as [1].
    http://www.iso.org/iso/catalogue_detail?csnumber=51502.
  5. ISO 32000-2-20140220; Document management — Portable document format — Part 2: PDF 2.0; Technical Committee ISO/TC 171/SC 2, in draft form (Feb. 2014).
  6. ISO 24517-1:2008; Document Management — Engineering document format using PDF — Part 1: Use of PDF 1.6 (PDF/E-1); Technical Committee ISO/TC 171/SC 2 (May 2008).
    http://www.iso.org/iso/catalogue_detail?csnumber=42274.
  7. ISO 14289-1:2012; Document management applications — Electronic document file format enhancement for accessibility — Part 1: Use of ISO 32000-1 (PDF/UA-1); Technical Committee ISO/TC 171/SC 2 (July 2012). http://www.iso.org/iso/home/store/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=54564.
    Revised as ISO 14289-1:2014 (December 2014): http://www.iso.org/iso/home/store/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=64599.
  8. PDF/UA Technical Implementation Guide: Understanding ISO 14289-1 (PDF/UA-1). AIIM Global Community of Information Professionals. http://www.aiim.org/Re search-and-Publications/standards/committees/PDFUA/Technical-Implementation -Guide.
  9. ISO 16612-2:2010; Graphic technology — Variable data exchange — Part 2: Using PDF/X-4 and PDF/X-5 (PDF/VT-1 and PDF/VT-2). Technical Committee ISO/TC 130 (December 2005). http://www.iso.org/iso/home/store/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm? csnumber=38013.
  10. ISO 15930-1:2001; Graphic technology — Prepress digital data exchange — Use of PDF — Part 1: Complete exchange using CMYK data (PDF/X-1 and PDF/X-1a). Technical Committee ISO/TC 130 (December 2001). http://www.iso.org/iso/home/store/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=29061.
  11. ISO 15930-3:2002; Graphic technology — Prepress digital data exchange — Use of PDF — Part 3: Complete exchange suitable for colour-managed workflows (PDF/X-3). Technical Committee ISO/TC 130 (September 2002). http://www.iso.org/iso/home/store/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=34941.
  12. ISO 15930-4:2003; Graphic technology — Prepress digital data exchange — Use of PDF — Part 4: Complete exchange of CMYK and spot colour printing data using PDF 1.4 (PDF/X-1a). Technical Committee ISO/TC 130 (December 2003). http://www.iso.org/iso/home/store/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=39938.
  13. ISO 15930-6:2003; Graphic technology — Prepress digital data exchange — Use of PDF — Part 6: Complete exchange of printing data suitable for colour-managed workflows using PDF 1.4 (PDF/X-3). Technical Committee ISO/TC 130 (December 2003). http://www.iso.org/iso/home/store/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=39940.
  14. ISO 15930-7:2010; Graphic technology — Prepress digital data exchange — Use of PDF — Part 7: Complete exchange of printing data (PDF/X-4) and partial exchange of printing data with external profile reference (PDF/X-4p) using PDF 1.6. Technical Committee ISO/TC 130 (July 2010). http://www.iso.org/iso/home/store/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=55843.
  15. ISO 15930-8:2010; Graphic technology — Prepress digital data exchange — Use of PDF — Part 8: Partial exchange of printing data using PDF 1.6 (PDF/X-5). Technical Committee ISO/TC 130 (July 2010). http://www.iso.org/iso/home/store/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=55844. Revision via Corrigendum: ISO 15930-8:2010/Cor 1:2011 (August 2011); http://www.iso.org/iso/home/store/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=60210.
  16. ISO 16684-1:2012; Graphic technology — Extensible metadata platform (XMP) specification — Part 1: Data model, serialization and core properties. Technical Committee ISO/TC 130 (February 2012). http://www.iso.org/iso/home/store/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=57421.

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