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Generate Accessible PDF documents for online learning

Is there a simple way to generate "accessible" pdf documents for use in certified online courses?

The only way I can figure so far is to generate a pdf from a Mathematica notebook, then use PDF acrobat to generate tagges and alternative text elements.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

POSTED BY: Wayne Weaver
5 Replies

Hi Wayne, that is a very good question with a few potential solutions. I would also suggest you reach out to support@wolfram.com so they can track this very important topic and the interest from users to support accessibility. PDFs are actually quite notoriously inaccessible for screen readers even when made "accessible". Would you be open to using HTML instead or is there a reason you need PDF? I have a utility that does some notebook exporting into more screen reader friendly formats.

https://github.com/KyleKeane/AccessibleNotebookExporter

and a slightly related one that converts LaTeX from arxiv into a more accessible HTML doc

https://github.com/KyleKeane/arxiv-a11y-importer

POSTED BY: Kyle Keane

Would either CDFs or Wolfram Cloud-based notebooks make sense in the context you have in mind?

POSTED BY: Daniel Lichtblau

Hi Danny, unfortunately neither of those are presently accessible for screen reader users.

POSTED BY: Kyle Keane

Thanks for the suggestions. I typically export to pdf as it seems to be the most universally accepted format for students. However, I will look into the html options as that may also be useful.

POSTED BY: Wayne Weaver

I ran into some issues trying to tag a pdf generated using Wolfram alpha notebook. I found another work around to save a postscript document and convert that using Adobe Acrobat Pro to a pdf. I was able to tag it with no issues and our school's "accessibility checker" scored it as a 78% accessible which I will take. I need to fix color contrast but can wait for another day. Just another option available should tagging garble a page of a pdf document like it did to me.

POSTED BY: Gene Harr
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