[Blindmath] Accessible LaTeX

[Michael Whapples]

On 06/11/09 17:13, Neil Soiffer wrote:
> TeX is a programming language, and therein lies its power and its peril.
> The principle of equal access means that if you don't expect your sighted
> readers to understand the macros, then you should not expect visually
> impaired readers to understand them in order to read your paper.
> I think this supports the argument of the rendered output like mathml in a browser. Andrew probably doesn't expect his sighted readers to read the macros because they will read the print (either paper or electronic view of print notation) and likewise I would say as a blind person I should not be expected to read the LaTeX, ideally I would have it in a form which is natural to me (Braille in my case).
>    

I don't think there's anything I really want to comment on below, seems 
to be sensible stuff.

Michael Whapples

> If tex4ht didn't produce good results, there are some other translators.
> You might try LaTeXML (http://dlmf.nist.gov/LaTeXML/) and see if you get
> better results.  If you use a custom .sty file, you'll probably have trouble
> with it unless you write some extra stuff to handle the defs in the .sty
> file.
>
> I do recommend that you make the source available as there are people who
> find reading TeX works best for them for math.  But there are also plenty of
> people who, for whatever reason, would prefer to hear a more natural
> notation or prefer braille... just as many sighted readers would prefer to
> read the output of TeX and not read the source.  So I hope you find a way to
> produce MathML from your TeX source.
>
> As to your question about producing tagged PDF:  it is extremely difficult
> to do.  I do not believe it is a viable option for you -- the only solution
> is to modify pdftex.  If you are interested in helping out with that
> project, I'll put you in contact with the lead developer on that -- he wants
> more people involved so the project moves along faster.
>
> Neil Soiffer
> Senior Scientist
> Design Science, Inc.
> www.dessci.com
> ~ Makers of MathType, MathFlow, MathPlayer, MathDaisy, WebEQ, Equation
> Editor ~
>
>
> On Fri, Nov 6, 2009 at 4:21 AM, Andrew Stacey<andrew.stacey at math.ntnu.no>wrote:
>
>    
>> On Fri, Nov 06, 2009 at 11:21:31AM +0000, P. R. Stanley wrote:
>>      
>>> Andrew
>>> you do not need to change anything. LaTeX source is just fine.
>>> I should expend my efforts on educating the readers on the benefits of
>>> LaTeX rather than trying to make it less complicated with the so-called
>>> solutions that are advertised on these lists.
>>> Blind people, most blind people, are smart enough to cope with a bit of
>>> complexity. ( smile)
>>>        
>> Assuming that this is true (yours is the first reply, so I don't wish to
>> presume on what the others may say), may I refine my question.  The
>> conclusion
>> of this is that I should make the source available (well, it is already as
>> it
>> is on the arXiv, but I should also make it available from my homepage).
>> Here's an extract from one of my papers:
>>
>>   We denote \docat by \(\docat\) and \socat by \(\ocat\).
>>   We refer to the functor \(\docat \to \dcat\) which assigns to an \doobj
>> the
>> underlying \dobj as the \emph{forgetful functor}.  We write the underlying
>> \dobj of an \doobj[\doobj] as \(\abs{\doobj}\).
>>
>> How accessible is that?
>>
>> I'm afraid that I have a rather heavy reliance on macros.
>>
>> As a brief explanation, these particular macros are a sort of object
>> oriented
>> TeX.  The last three characters, 'cat' and 'obj' in the above, indicate the
>> property that I'm referencing and the preceding characters, 'do', 'so',
>> 'o',
>> and 'd' in the above, indicate the specific instance.  Thus 'dcat' is
>> a particular category, 'scat' is another (in this case the category of
>> sets),
>> 'dobj' is an object in the category 'dcat', and so forth.  As an author, it
>> was an incredibly useful bit of programming and I've been using it in
>> subsequent papers.  I realise that this may make me a bit of a special
>> case,
>> but then I'm asking for advice for what I can do as well as general
>> principles.
>>
>> Andrew
>>
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>>      
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