Re: Org mode export accessibility

[Ihor Radchenko]

"T.V Raman" <raman@google.com> writes:

> 1. Accessibility as word used in isolation has now become mostly
>    meaningless, to be concrete one has to ask "Accessibility to whom"? 
>
> 2. So in the following, everything I say is with respect to users with
>    visual impairments.

This is exactly the perspective I was hoping to hear from you. Though
this thread is not dedicated to visual impairments. (I guess you also
did not touch the question of color blindness).

> 3. It's incorrect to define "Accessibility" in terms of a specific
>    user access tool or technology -- that usage is marketing jargon
>    for a specific Access Solution like a screenreader --- so I refrain in 
> general from
>    defining this in terms of Screenreaders.

Yet, in order to simplify the efforts needed to read a document exported
from Org mode one needs to use some kind of tool/technology. Unless a
common standard exist in this area, we have to support at least the most
common Access Solutions (prioritizing Free software, if possible).

>From you message, it does not look like there is any common standard.

> With those meta-thoughts out of the way:
>
> A: Org-generated documents are mostly well-structured documents, and ...
> B: The LaTeX->PDF pipeline *can* produce tagged PDF with respect to ...
> C: pdftex and pdflatex were built in the late 90's by a student in ...
> D: All that said, it is likely still easier to go from org->HTML ...

Do I understand correctly that you have no issues with reading documents
exported using current version of Org?

> E: Finally, note that in (D) I said "machine processable" not
> "Accessible"; machine-processable is a pre-requisite to "repurpose "
> what you publish, and making  that result usable by different user
> communities is a direct consequence of suche machine-processability.

I understand. But one can similarly say that .org files are "machine
processable" and Org export code is not strictly necessary. Yet, it ends
up extremely useful in practice.

I suspect that the exported documents can similarly be improved to
reduce the amount of efforts required from visually impair users to read
such documents. The question is what kinds improvements can be made on
Org side.

Best,
Ihor