Re: Org mode export accessibility

[T.V Raman]

briangpowell <briangpowellms@gmail.com> writes:


P.S. Please dont quote me out of context. I did not say pdftex and
pdflatex were not useful, I still rely on them heavily.
> "[I suspect that the exported documents can similarly be improved to
> reduce the amount of effort required from visually impaired users to
> read
> such documents. The question is what improvements can be made on
> Org side.]
>
> Best,
> Ihor"
>
> Very glad to hear from TV Raman, the creator of EmacSpeak,
>
> I'm not blind like TV but I was motivated to turn my a main OrgMode
> buffer into an audio desktop like TV's
>
> But now back to the topic; much agree with Ihor, we should focus on
> "what improvements can be made on OrgMode side"
>
> & TV's points are well made too: "pdftex and pdflatex were built in
> the late 90's"--very true & they were rarely useful
>
> Suggest OrgMode make changes aimed at the "Lowest Common Denominator"
> of accessibility--accessibility in the visual sense AND in the machine
> or program processable sense or more exactly the "document convertible
> sense"--I mean documents should be made firstly in a form that all
> computers can easily navigate & present on computer screens and/or
> audio desktops in addition to being readily able to print out
>
> TV's right, the usual pipeline of LaTeX->PDF can produce tagged &
> useful documents but can an end user easily copy and paste the
> document? How useful are pretty documents that run on proprietary
> systems? Many PDF's can make simple processes like this very hard or
> impossible--the documents can be very pretty but they can contain
> control characters & special characters & even malicious code
>
> Suggest OrgMode outputs focus on creating "Lowest Common Denominator"
> documents as output:
> TeXinfo docs should be used as the LCD doctype--suggest you focus on
> creating 1 document in Texinfo that you use to create all other sorts
> of documents, when possible:
>
> Pipeline should be more like
> OrgMode->Texinfo->TROFF||DTD/XML/HTML/XHTML->LaTeX/TeX->DVI||SVG->PS->PDF
>
>
> * TeXinfo: https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/texinfo
> https://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo
>
> ** "Texinfo uses a single source file to produce output in a number of
> formats, both online and printed (dvi, html, info, pdf, xml, etc.).
> This means that instead of writing different documents for online
> information and another for a printed manual, you need write only one
> document.  And when the work is revised, you need revise only that one
> document.  The Texinfo system is integrated well with GNU Emacs. 
>
> *** Texinfo docs can also be viewed & used by ALL end-users without
> any issues--regardless of the power of their computer or monitor or
> even if they're blind like TV Raman--he uses an audio desktop or
> EmacSpeak--and the same docs can be printed on any printer & remain
> navigable with "rn" & other simple news-reading software--or the
> "info" program
>
> * Output formats currently supported by Texinfo:
> https://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/manual/texinfo/html_node/Output-Formats.html
> <=> Info,Text,HTML,DVI,PostScript{PS},PDF,DocBook,XML
>
> ** Related/useful may be: "latex2nemeth"--a LATEX to Braille/Nemeth,
> approach "Simple pictures in PSTricks are also supported in order to
> produce tactile graphics": https://ctan.org/pkg/latex2nemeth
>
> On Thu, Jun 30, 2022 at 3:53 AM Ihor Radchenko <yantar92@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>     "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
>

-- 

Thanks,

--Raman(I Search, I Find, I Misplace, I Research)
?7?4 Id: kg:/m/0285kf1  ?0?8