[BlindMath] Tips for authoring accessible math/STEM

[Vincenzo Mantova]

Hi Justin,

There's been a lot of work in the UK regarding conversion from LaTeX to
HTML and integration with LMSs such as Blackboard Ultra, Canvas, Moodle.

Chirun <http://chirun.org.uk/docs/en/latest/> is a fairly mature solution
for converting LaTeX to HTML developed at Newcastle, within what is
possible with the current tech -- meaning that only certain LaTeX packages
are supported, and you can expect issues during conversion that require
tweaking the sources. It is based on PlasTeX and it even offers LTI
integration. It is used in Newcastle and I believe in quite a few other
universities in the UK. I understand you can try Chirun without installing
it by uploading files on https://lti.chirun.org.uk/. They also have a sample
course <https://www.chirun.org.uk/demo/>.

In Leeds we came up with BookML <https://vlmantova.github.io/bookml/>,
which is less mature than Chirun, but based on LaTeXML, so it should be
compatible with more LaTeX documents. Similar caveats apply. We have been
using it in Leeds for a few years now and it's become relatively easy to
use. To try BookML without installing it, you can use this GitHub action
<https://github.com/vlmantova/bookml-action>. BookML will also package the
HTML files into SCORM, which should integrate well with Canvas. forall x:
Calgary <https://forallx.openlogicproject.org/html/> is a very good example
of a LaTeX document put through BookML. You might recognise the style of
the output: it is essentially identical to bookdown, but with better WCAG
compliance.

There are other options of course (tex4ht, lwarp, pandoc, etc), but to my
knowledge Chirun and BookML are the only ones that try to be complete
solutions.

Speaking of BookML, I should be upfront and say we don't have a lot of
evidence as to how well it achieves its accessibility goals. Students in
general seem to like it, and that includes some VI ones, but that's as much
as I know. Actually, any feedback and issue reports on GitHub would be
appreciated!

Best,
Vincenzo


On Wed, 12 Feb 2025 at 02:49, Romack, Justin via BlindMath <
blindmath at nfbnet.org> wrote:

> Howdy all!
>
> I’m getting an increasing number of requests to develop accessible math
> content – but even more interest for our faculty to develop accessible
> versions of their own content. Woohoo!
>
> But here’s where I’m stuck: What would you recommend when authors are
> using LaTeX and want their output to offer accessible markup for blind/VI
> and other AT users?
>
> Most of this work will be done to avoid PDFs in general and many of our
> faculty use Canvas – but I want solutions that can support Canvas
> environments as well as individual faculty websites, distributable
> documents, etc.
>
> What advice would you offer?
>
> Grateful to each of you!
>
> Take good care,
> J
>
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