[BlindMath] Accessible PDFs from LaTeX

Thu Jul 30 12:11:28 UTC 2020

Pandoc would be a good start.
I would suggest browsing the user manual, particularly the "Pandoc's Markdown" section.
https://pandoc.org/MANUAL.html

The software can be downloaded via the Web site, or installed using package managers on some operating systems. It runs under Linux, Mac, Windows, etc.

-----Original Message-----
From: Ramana Polavarapu <sriramana at gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, July 29, 2020 9:51 PM
To: Blind Math list for those interested in mathematics <blindmath at nfbnet.org>
Cc: White, Jason J <jjwhite at ets.org>; Godfrey, Jonathan <A.J.Godfrey at massey.ac.nz>
Subject: Re: [BlindMath] Accessible PDFs from LaTeX

Hi Jason, Hi Jonathan,

I truly appreciate both your observations.  All these  days, I have been using only LaTeX for my work.  I would like to learn more about how to generate HTML through markdown.  Any pointers or tutorials where to  start?  Thank you.

Best regards,

Ramana

On 7/30/20, White, Jason J via BlindMath <blindmath at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> I am responding in support of Jonathan's central point that PDF should
> not be assumed to be the desired output format nowadays. Not only, as
> he notes, do some journals publish HTML alongside PDF, but the growing
> use of modern digital publishing formats such as EPUB represents a
> shift away from fixed-layout, page-based formats, and toward Web-based
> delivery via HTML and CSS.
>
> The advantage of PDF is that it captures the exact typography and
> layout of printed pages, just as Postscript did. It can also be viewed
> on a wide variety of devices (screen displays as well as printers).
> However, Web-based formats are better if you need to optimize the
> layout for desktop as well as mobile reading without creating multiple
> representations of the document - all you need are different style
> rules for the different display types. I predict that there will be a
> continuing shift toward Web formats as the primary publication medium.
> For now, as noted, I simply create parallel HTML and PDF. For my work,
> I often need features that aren't readily available in Markdown, such
> as cross-references and greater control over presentation, so I find
> myself writing documents directly in LaTeX. However, I write some
> simpler documents in Markdown, including presentation slides - converted via Pandoc to HTML.
> Git repositories provide revision control, and makefiles automate the
> document generation.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: BlindMath <blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Godfrey,
> Jonathan via BlindMath
> Sent: Wednesday, July 29, 2020 6:44 PM
> To: Blind Math list for those interested in mathematics
> <blindmath at nfbnet.org>
> Cc: Godfrey, Jonathan <A.J.Godfrey at massey.ac.nz>
> Subject: Re: [BlindMath] Accessible PDFs from LaTeX
>
> Hello,
>
> Like Jason, I use HTML as my go-to format for maximising accessibility
> of the content, including the mathematical stuff.
>
> One of the critical points for making anything accessible is the
> amount of extra work required to do so. For many of the people making
> material blind people are expected to use, this is just too hard at
> present. There are notable exceptions though, including an increasing
> number of publishers that are making their journal articles available in HTML as well as the pdf.
> Publishers get a great return on their investment in terms of the
> massive number of pages they process.
>
> I used to use LaTeX for most documents; I wrote my doctoral thesis and
> many other long documents and several journal articles using LaTeX.
> The only documents I use LaTeX for today though are done this way
> because I'm still using content created ten years ago in one form or
> another. I am converting the more useful content from back then into
> more-friendly markdown to align with how I do my work today.
>
> There are a few things I loved about using LaTeX that aren't
> particularly easy in markdown, but they are the last 5% of a document.
> The effort required on the first 95% of content is considerably easier
> to create in markdown as compared to LaTeX.
>
> I can still create the pdf from my markdown source because that
> processing is done via conversion to a *.tex file first. I could of
> course just convert to word or html and print to pdf from there, but
> the reasons why people wanted pdf in the first place apply to HTML
> too, with one exception. Many pdf files were created so that people
> could not tamper with the content or the presentation. It is possible
> to tamper if the user has the right tools of course, but the basic
> consumer isn't going to do that. The same is true for HTML which is
> consumed via a browser and cannot be edited without use of a tool (sometimes part of the browser) to view and alter the HTML source.
> The consumer does have quite a bit of power to re-present the content
> in a form that suits them with font size and full screen viewing being
> the two things sighted people in my world like to be doing.
>
> So, Bert's question is important to keep tabs on, but we should also
> be asking why a format like the pdf (even if tagged) is actually what
> we want in the end. I accept that might be the case, but is that
> because we are asked to make a choice about which singular format the
> world wants to have; we might say tagged pdf, but the implication is
> that we cannot have multiple formats. The ability to produce multiple
> formats was a hard problem ten years ago; I suggest that it is much less so today.
>
> Jonathan
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: BlindMath <blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of White,
> Jason J via BlindMath
> Sent: Thursday, 30 July 2020 12:50 AM
> To: Blind Math list for those interested in mathematics
> <blindmath at nfbnet.org>
> Cc: White, Jason J <jjwhite at ets.org>; Bert Van Landeghem
> <b.vanlandeghem at sheffield.ac.uk>
> Subject: Re: [BlindMath] Accessible PDFs from LaTeX
>
> To the best of my knowledge, these packages are rather experimental at
> the moment and require explicit manual tagging of the content using
> LaTeX macros that generate the PDF structure tree. There's a mailing
> list, and packages are under development, but they aren't at the point
> of working on typical LaTeX documents without a lot of extra work on the author's part.
>
> What I normally do as a pragmatic solution is to generate an HTML
> version alongside the PDF, using packages such as lwarp or TeX4HT. I
> take the view that HTML of reasonable quality is more accessible, on
> more platforms and devices, than tagged PDF is. My testing indicates
> that only users of Adobe Reader under Windows would benefit from PDF
> tagging anyway at the moment, and that it's simply ignored by other
> PDF readers. So, unless you're writing for a publication that insists
> on receiving tagged PDF, I would recommend generating HTML as your
> accessible format. For example, you can write a makefile that keeps both the PDF and HTML versions up to date.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: BlindMath <blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Bert Van
> Landeghem via BlindMath
> Sent: Wednesday, July 29, 2020 6:24 AM
> To: blindmath at nfbnet.org
> Cc: Bert Van Landeghem <b.vanlandeghem at sheffield.ac.uk>
> Subject: [BlindMath] Accessible PDFs from LaTeX
>
> Dear all,
>
>
>
> The content of a LateX document can be read with a braille display and
> allows screenreader users to access the mathematical content. However,
> the compiled output (such as PDFs) are generally not accessible if no
> special attention is given to the issue. We then first think about the
> formulae which cannot be read with a braille display, but these PDFs
> are also not tagged at least if you use the standard packages. I know
> that a lot has happened over the last years in this field, and that
> several packages are available to tag PDFs and to make formulae
> accessible in PDFs and other output formats. The only problem is that
> I do not find a comprehensive overview of the state-of-the-art. Could
> somebody point me to the most reliable and comprehensive packages that
> are available in this field to date?
>
>
>
> Many thanks,
>
> Bert
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