[Blindmath] LaTeX and Accessible Documents

[John Gardner]

Joseph, Latex is accessible to people who know Latex, but even to them, it
is not always the easiest code to read.  There are two other possibilities:
* If you can convert your Latex to html+MathML (for example using the
tx4html application (see
http://www.access2science.com/latex/tutorial_txht.xhtml for a tutorial by
Michael Whapples on using this app.) you will have an accessible html page
that many blind people can read.
* Use the Tex2Word application
(http://www.chikrii.com/products/tex2word/tex-to-word/) to convert your
LaTeX to MS Word+MathType.  Again many blind people can read this.

If you offered all three, you give blind people their choice of several ways
to read your page.  You might consider putting up the html+MathML page
instead of the PDF and just have an accessible site!


-----Original Message-----
From: Blindmath [mailto:blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Joseph C.
Lininger via Blindmath
Sent: Friday, December 26, 2014 5:07 AM
To: blindmath at nfbnet.org
Subject: [Blindmath] LaTeX and Accessible Documents

Howdy folks,
I posted a message very similar to this one on the NFBCS mailing list, 
and I was advised to also ask my question here. If you have already 
responded to me on the nfbcs list, feel free to repost your response on 
this list; I won't take offense. I encourage rereading though, as I've 
added more info to this post that wasn't in the original.

I am currently working on a free cryptography library called FCL. Part 
of the materials generated from this project are a set of english 
descriptions for the ciphers, block cipher modes, hash functions, etc. I 
plan to distribute these with the project, and I might compile them 
together and distribute them as documents on my web site or something 
like that.

Having run into the problem of accessibility of mathematical and other 
tehcnical material first hand, I had hoped to make these materials 
accessible. I used the LaTeX type setting system to write these 
documents. I could simply provide the LaTeX source as an option since 
the PDF's are not particularly accessible, or I could do something else 
if people have suggestions on something that might be better. Does 
anyone have any ideas as to how I could make a more accessible 
end-product from my LaTeX sources? This information would also be useful 
to me for situations where I want to share something like an academic 
paper I wrote with my blind friends, as I use LaTeX for those as well.

I have documents on the Blowfish and RC5 algorithms available now, and 
one on the CAST5 algorithm which is partially completed if people would 
like to see what I have in mind. In the short term, I plan to do DES and 
AES. I would also love to do serpent if I can find an accessible 
algorithm specification.
Joe
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