[BlindMath] Beamer PDF Accessibility

Fri Nov 14 01:17:00 UTC 2025

Jonathan mentioned the LaTeX project's work on making LaTeX accessible.
That makes both PDF and HTML generated from LaTeX much more accessible.
With over 40 years of LaTeX package development, it will take some time
before all the packages that have accessibility issues get updated. But I
know the project is working through them and already have most of the most
popular packages working with accessibility.

Jonathan also wrote:

> There have been some obvious access nightmares in LaTeX and screen reader
> users. I still use \varepsilon instead of \epsilon because the former was
> read by JAWS and the latter was not. This is really unfortunate for a
> statistician whose models all end in epsilon of some kind.

MathML 4 has a solution for this and related problems in the form of the
"intent" attribute that authors can use. MathCAT already implements this
and since it is used in JAWS, it will work there as well as NVDA and other
places  (JAWS seems to run about 6 months behind the current status of
MathCAT but JAW's MathCAT does support intent).

LaTeX now has the ability for authors to define their own macros that
generate "intent". Using \let and \renewcommand, one can redefine existing
macros like \epsilon so that they generate whatever speech is desirable,
independent of what the screen reader might have said... or not said. This
will hopefully help Jonathan the author, but of course if Jonathan the
reader (or you) don't have the LaTeX source and it doesn't read well,
there's not much you can do other than ask the author to fix whatever
problem you have run into.

    Neil

On Wed, Nov 12, 2025 at 4:43 PM Jonathan Godfrey via BlindMath <
blindmath at nfbnet.org> wrote:

> Hello Bert,
>
> The points you raise are important, but at present pdf is a long way
> behind HTML even if HTML is not perfect.
>
> Cleaner LaTeX source would be quite helpful if people wanted to read the
> source code.
>
> I have not done any experiments with Gen AI (yet) to unpick what is being
> expressed in LaTeX. If confronted with something so complex that my screen
> reader could not handle adequately, I'd probably look to the source. If
> that was too ugly, I'd be pushing it through a process which made it more
> friendly to the consumer.
>
> There is a lot of opportunity in LaTeX for authors to 1. Add complexity in
> order to gain cosmetic outcomes, 2. To create author defined functions
> (again to suit something which might be semantic or cosmetic, 3. Use
> obscure packages or functions to generate utterly obscure symbols, and 4.
> Use archaic code styles. Each of these offers access challenges to some
> extent. I would point out though that the second point was advantageous in
> my own LaTeX documents because it created abbreviations which were easily
> digested (in Braille or audio) when reading the source.
>
> There have been some obvious access nightmares in LaTeX and screen reader
> users. I still use \varepsilon instead of \epsilon because the former was
> read by JAWS and the latter was not. This is really unfortunate for a
> statistician whose models all end in epsilon of some kind.
>
> I accept that there is still plenty of room for improvements, but I also
> know that my reliance on sighted support has reduced considerably over the
> last ten years because so much improvement has been made. Until recently,
> none of that improvement was happening at the core of LaTeX.
>
> All the best,
> Jonathan
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: BlindMath <blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Bert Van
> Landeghem via BlindMath
> Sent: Thursday, 13 November 2025 12:14 pm
> To: Blind Math list for those interested in mathematics <
> blindmath at nfbnet.org>
> Cc: Bert Van Landeghem <b.vanlandeghem at sheffield.ac.uk>
> Subject: Re: [BlindMath] Beamer PDF Accessibility
>
> Dear Jonathan,
>
> I agree with LaTeX code being cumbersome to read, and notation can be
> inconsistent as people are using different packages and lay-out. However,
> reading maths with screenreaders in HTML is still rather experimental,
> either. As you know, there are various types of Braille math around the
> world. In JAWS, you need to have contracted Braille activated to be able to
> read your formula in Braille. If you do not read contracted Braille, you do
> not get maths displayed on the braille display. Reading long formula
> through the speech output is cumbersome as well. I am confident that we
> will see progress in these areas.
>
> Kind regards,
> Bert
>
>
> On Wed, 12 Nov 2025 at 22:55, Jonathan Godfrey via BlindMath <
> blindmath at nfbnet.org> wrote:
>
> > Hello,
> >
> > As a person who has been critical of LaTeX to pdf alone as a workflow,
> > for a decade or more, I think I should comment that a serious
> > commitment to generating pdf that is accessible is being worked on.
> >
> > To meet my criteria, the process will not be accessible until every
> > document created from LaTeX source is born accessible, without the
> > author needing to do anything relating to extra packages or even
> > knowledge of what makes a document accessible.
> >
> > That is, no post-processing of documents by supposed experts in
> > accessibility.
> >
> > A pdf generated by LaTeX cannot meet my expectations, no matter if it
> > is a slide deck, article,  or something else until the process of
> > making it accessible is entirely embedded in the processing of all LaTeX
> documents.
> >
> > That means you must get the source files.
> >
> > I follow  process like that suggested by Bert if I have to work with a
> > legacy LaTeX document. FWIW, I use markdown instead of LaTeX until I
> > must meet someone's publishing constraints, at which point my markdown
> > gets pushed into a tex file and processed as per the publisher's
> requests.
> >
> >
> > I do not think a blind  student should have to read raw LaTeX code.
> > The ways we write source code in LaTeX is far from consistent and
> > frequently lazy. Generation into HTML either by pandoc or another
> > process is much smarter.
> >
> > All the best,
> > Jonathan
> >
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: BlindMath <blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Caitlin
> > McKeown via BlindMath
> > Sent: Thursday, 13 November 2025 10:32 am
> > To: Blind Math list for those interested in mathematics <
> > blindmath at nfbnet.org>
> > Cc: Caitlin McKeown <cjmckeow at ncsu.edu>
> > Subject: [BlindMath] Beamer PDF Accessibility
> >
> > Hello!
> >
> > I am wondering if anyone has any experience, suggestions, or templates
> > for making Beamer PDFs accessible?
> >
> > For a little background, I work at a university and nearly all of our
> > math and statistics faculty use Beamer to produce their lecture
> > slides. For those (like me) who are unfamiliar with Beamer, it is a
> > program used to convert LaTeX directly into presentation slides in PDF
> > format. These slides are generated directly from LaTeX so all of the
> > underlying code and text is there, but the output format from Beamer is
> a completely untagged PDF.
> > Because of all of the math notation, remediating the slides with
> > Acrobat is less than ideal, and feels like a step backwards when the
> > LaTeX already exists. Our faculty would prefer either a different
> > process or a different tool to make their content accessible using the
> > LaTeX code they have already written.
> >
> > Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Caitlin
> >
> > --
> >
> > Caitlin McKeown, Ph.D.
> >
> > Senior Instructional Designer
> >
> > Digital Education and Learning Technology Applications (DELTA)
> >
> > cjmckeow at ncsu.edu
> >
> > delta.ncsu.edu
> >
> >
> > NC State University
> >
> > Campus Box 7113
> >
> > Center for Technology and Innovation
> >
> > 1010 Main Campus Drive
> > Raleigh, NC 27695
> >
> >
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