Re: org exported pdf files

[Jude DaShiell]

I've never done anything with latex.  The closest I got to latex was using
groff for a little bit of time a long time ago.  On this one I'm in way
over my head without scuba gear.  Apparently html and adobe left latex in
the dust in so far as accessibility is concerned.



Jude <jdashiel at panix dot com> "There are four boxes to be used in
defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author, 1940)

.

On Wed, 28 Sep 2022, Tim Cross wrote:

>
> Jude DaShiell <jdashiel@panix.com> writes:
>
> > It was one of the messages from this list that got me that reply.  For
> > now, when I get a pdf file I try extracting it with pdftotext and read the
> > extracted text.  I don't make pdf files or make pdf files available for
> > anyone else.  How adobe accessibility recommendations for pdf files will
> > translate to Linux I don't know many were geared toward windows if memory
> > serves.  I haven't used windows since 2013 and don't intend using windows
> > for the duration either.
> >
>
> The problem is not with org mode, but rather with the limitations of
> Latex. The basic problem is that latex pre-dates accessibility concerns
> and lacks full support for tagging, alt text and other document
> structure information necessary to make PDF files accessible. Adding a
> language environment setting will have only minimal benefit. It is the
> tagging and other structural information which is necessary to make
> things really accessible i.e. the ability to browse a PDF document and
> retain the structural relationships within the document and use that
> information in a meaningful way - consider for example, browsing data
> inside a table within a PDF document.
>
> There are accessibility working groups within the tex/latex community
> who have been working on trying to improve accessibility of documents
> created using latex and some progress has been made. However, it is
> nowhere near the same level of sophistication as supported by other PDF
> generators, like adobe's suite, which has very good accessibility
> support and can enable production of some of the best accessible
> documents I've used.
>
> There are a couple of additional latex packages which can be added to
> documents which will provide some tagging and other structural
> information which will significantly improve the accessibility of PDF
> documents. I've not tested these with different engines.
>
> https://ctan.org/pkg/accessibility?lang=en
>
> and you would want ot add
>
> \usepackage[tagged, highstructure]{accessibility}
>
> to your packages list.
>
> To add accessibility for math formulas etc, you need
>
> https://ctan.org/pkg/axessibility?lang=en
>
> and add
>
> \usepackage{axessibility}
>
> As with other authoring, you also need to consider accessibility
> requirements when creating your documents and do things like adding \alt
> textg for figures etc.
>
> It would probably be good to add the two above packages as part of the
> 'default' package preamble, but this would require considerable testing
> as it isn't known if there will be adverse effects when mixed with other
> packages.
>
>
>