[BlindMath] Please, more talk between blind math users and LaTeX developers

[Neil Soiffer]

Please bear in mind that money is also a factor. Those latex developers who
work on latex do it on their own time. They have had a few donations, but
nowhere near enough to fund a full time position, let alone several
positions. AFAIK, those estimates were based on their current ability to do
work. They recently got funding from Adobe and I believe that will allow at
least one person to work full time on this (maybe it was two people) and
that they expect substantial progress on tagging this year, and maybe math
support the following year.

I hope I'm accurately describing the current situation and not letting my
optimism influence my memory. I expect to help out in what little way I
can, especially for the math tagging, and will know more late in the month.
I will update the list with their current status and plans at that point.

Neil Soiffer


On Thu, Mar 11, 2021 at 7:27 PM Tony Malykh via BlindMath <
blindmath at nfbnet.org> wrote:

> Hi Jonathan,
>
> Thanks for working on this. I did my own investigation a while ago and I
> came to a similar conclusion that this is largely a social problem. Very
> interesting document about timeline of Latex to tagged PDF development.
> Although it seems almost ridiculously slow: spend 3 years and looks like
> that won't even tag the actual math content. But still good to know that
> they are working on that.
>
> Please let me know if you need any social support to push on this - like
> write an email/petition to latex developers - I myself work in ML and I
> am heavily affected by lack of accessible PDFs in ML conferences. I can
> probably also find a couple of more blind ML devs who would hopefully
> agree to push jointly.
>
> Thanks
>
> Tony
>
>
> On 3/3/2021 7:46 AM, Jonathan Fine via BlindMath wrote:
> > Hi
> >
> > This is about improving communication between blind math students and
> > support staff on the one side and the LaTeX developers on the other.
> >
> > I'll be brief. Kellee Sanchez's request for help started a discussion
> which
> > I found to be very good. It covers many interlinked topics. It will take
> me
> > some time to digest and understand. I'm learning so much from this
> > discussion.
> > http://nfbnet.org/pipermail/blindmath_nfbnet.org/2021-March/009702.html
> >
> > I'm a long-time TeX user. I'd like the developers there, particularly
> those
> > focussed on accessible PDF and on TeX-to-HTML (or XML), to similarly
> learn
> > from this discussion. To make this discussion more accessible to them and
> > others, I'll summarize it in posts on my blog.
> > https://jfine2358.github.io/
> >
> > I think there's a real social problem. TeX users care about typography.
> > Blind people can't see typography. TeX users love PDF. Blind people, it
> > seems to me, love accessible HTML. Blind students need accessible
> material
> > during the course. TeX developers think long term.
> >
> > This need not be a problem. We all care about communication and
> usability.
> > We have shared interests and values. The social problem I see is that
> there
> > are too few connections between these two communities.
> >
> > Let's have more sharing between the people on the Blind Math mailing list
> > and the developers on the LaTeX project. This conversation can help both
> > sides.
> >
> > The LaTeX developers hope to produce tagged PDF no sooner than 4 years
> from
> > now, with math support to follow later. For math support they need to
> > extract and store the TeX source for the equations.  Achieving this LaTeX
> > developer goal will I'm sure help blind math users.
> >
> https://www.latex-project.org/publications/2020-tagged-pdf-feasibility.pdf
> >
> > Let's make progress by talking more with each other. And working together
> > when we can.
> >
> > with best wishes
> >
> > Jonathan
> >
> > This message sent to:
> >
> > Blind Math mailing list
> > TUG accessibility mailing list
> > TUG texhax list
> > LaTeX3 mailing list
> > LaTeX team email address
> > TUG members
> > UK TUG members
> > _______________________________________________
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