[BlindMath] TeX Hour: Today: Code and Math Accessibility: Hard? Easy? When? Why?

[Jonathan Fine]

Hi

Tonight's TeX Hour is about code and math accessibility. I'd like to get
examples of accessibility being easy and hard, and to understand better
why.

The TeX Hour is today, Thursday 10 June, 6.30 to 7.30pm UK time. The UK
time now is at https://time.is/UK. The zoom details are
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/78551255396?pwd=cHdJN0pTTXRlRCtSd1lCTHpuWmNIUT09
Meeting ID: 785 5125 5396
Passcode: knuth

I'm interested in all reasons, including cultural, social, legal, technical
and economic. I hope that shared examples and understanding will help both
experts and beginners in this area.

Here's some top level suggestions:
1. There are legal requirements to provide accessibility.
2. Projects don't think early enough about accessibility.
3. Sighted developers don't get the blind user's experience.
4. There are mature standards, such as Nemeth Braille for mathematics.

Digging deeper we might say:
5. There's no STEM tools similar to https://wave.webaim.org/ for ordinary
web pages.

And deeper yet we might say:
6. Here are some good and not so good examples of an accessibility tree:
https://accessibleweb.com/question-answer/what-is-an-accessibility-tree-and-how-do-i-view-it/

Optimistically, I'm hoping this TeX Hour (really STEM Access Hour) will
collect and where necessary create useful resources. It's not enough to
provide the facts. Real world stories that relate to the reader are also
needed. Perhaps start with problems and questions, search for experts and
solutions, and then collect and curate the resources.

This is a general process. Being the TeX Hour, we have a special interest
and responsibility for matters such as LaTeX syntax, tagged PDF
capabilities, and navigation of mathematical content.

Interested? Please email me, or come along to the TeX Hour. I welcome your
experience and ideas. And I very much value questions from beginners.

The video from last week (Rethinking the beginner experience) is not yet on
YouTube.

with best regards

Jonathan