[BlindMath] Zoom meeting on accessible math: Thu 11 Feb 6:30 to 7:30 UK time

[Tony Malykh]

I did my own little investigation into this a while ago. Here is my 
understanding. I'll be happy if anyone corrects me if any of my points 
are not valid.
1. Tex was invented like in  1960s - and they had no idea about 
accessibility back then. Tex is really just the engine, and there are 
tons of packages written on top of that engine. Neither the engine, nor 
the packages were written with accessibility in mind.
2. There appear to have been some efforts to introduce Tex PDF 
accessibility. For example, see:
     * 
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/550511/what-is-the-best-package-for-accessibility-tagging/550523#550523
     * https://github.com/karel-brinda/tex-accessibility
     * https://github.com/integr-abile/axessibility
However, these packages seem to suffer from one common problem: they 
break visual layout  except for the simplest cases. That's the reason 
why conferences don't use this package.
3. In order to have a working accessibility Latex package, it appears 
that you need to make changes to nearly every otehr Latex package to 
make it to work with accessibility package. The number of tex packages 
that are widely used is enormous, therefore therethere's enormous amount 
of work to be done with no one to pay for, and let's be honest - with 
marginal benefits - there are not too many blind people in the world 
willing to read math papers.
4. I also stumbled upon the discussion with one of ML conference 
organizers (couldn't find a link now), and it seems like they were 
willing to work in that direction, that is enforce all the papers to be 
accessible, as long as there is a working accessibility package.
So my conclusion was that Latex PDF accessibility is not likely to be a 
reality in the nearby future. Even if NFB or any other blindness-related 
group forms an advocacy group to push for accessible Latex PDFs, it 
still feels unlikely  that widespread accessibility could be achieved, 
primarily becuase of complexity of the system.
Too bad. Again, hope someone can correct me.
--Tony

On 2/6/2021 7:10 AM, Petr Pařízek via BlindMath wrote:
> Jonathan wrote:
>
>
> <<<<<
>
> Many teachers use LaTeX for course materials. I'd like to have real-world
>
>> examples of LaTeX math, and accessibility problems and solutions. Please
>> send to this list or to me privately as you wish.
>> >>>>>
>
>
> Recently, someone has told me that out of the many existing TeX to PDF 
> converters out there, there doesn't seem to be such one that would be 
> able to label the math expressions with corresponding alternative text 
> in the PDF document. Sadly, I'm unable to verify whether this is 
> indeed the case or whether labeling graphics with alternative text is 
> somehow problematic in PDF documents. If alternative text is no 
> problem in formats like HTML, then I have no idea why it should be a 
> problem in PDF. And if it is not a question of issues with alternative 
> text itself, then I wonder why the converters can't use it for 
> labeling the math expressions properly (which are actually stored as 
> graphics). Honestly, I'd love to know myself what the answer to the 
> question is but I don't know anyone who knows enough both about the 
> actual PDF format and about the available TeX to PDF converters and 
> who could indeed give me the answer.
>
> Petr
>
>
>