Re: Accessibility questions that are less technical

Thanks again for the replies.  There was some interest when I said this:

5) There is sometimes a tradeoff between a presentation that is useful
for visually-impaired users and others.  To again name a concrete
example from ltx-talk, I sometimes show a sequence of graphics as
slides inside of a frame to illustrate changes (say, developing arc
length as line segments become shorter).  Only the graphic changes,
not the surrounding text.  I understand screen readers to re-read the
entire slide; certainly Okular does.  That's pretty tedious after five
slides.  Does anyone have advice about working through that?

Folks told me that the answer is that the reader I was using, Okular
on Linux, is not sufficient.  But I got some questions so just to make
the example concrete, I uploaded a file to my website
https://hefferon.net/review_integration.pdf that shows the behavior.
FWIW, it uses ltx-talk.cls and the source is
https://gitlab.com/jim.hefferon/calc-ii-talks/-/blob/master/review_integration/review_integration.tex?ref_type=heads.
  Under Okular, if I ask it to read the whole document then it reads
the frame headed "Prototype" a new time for each slide, which is a lot
of times.

Best,
Jim

On Tue, Jan 27, 2026 at 3:01 PM Jim Hefferon <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Thank you Ulrike and David.  Very helpful replies.  For sure the video
> acts exactly like I want the doc to act, which is not what I was
> getting from Okular.  I'll look into all of the suggestions.  (My
> Firefox is #147; I couldn't immediately get orca to work with it but
> I'll look more.)
>
> I should try the blind-mathematicians list again; for myself, I know
> I've lost emails before now.
>
> Perhaps there are other people interested in discussing and sharing
> accessibility more as users than as developers?  If there is
> significant interest then we could figure out a convenient way.
>
> Regards,
> Jim
>
> On Tue, Jan 27, 2026 at 9:44 AM David Carlisle <[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > On Tue, 27 Jan 2026 at 13:36, Jim Hefferon <[email protected]> wrote:
> >>
> >> Hello.  I have a number of questions that are perhaps less technical
> >> than most posts here.  I apologize; they seem too soft SE or latex3's
> >> GitHub list, the tug.org accessibility list does not have substantive
> >> traffic, and the blind-mathematicians mailing list did not accept my
> >> email. I hope folks here don't mind.
> >>
> >> I intend to re-make a book of mine to be accessible and I'm struggling
> >> with some things that arose out of some preliminary, practice, work
> >> that I did.
> >>
> >> 1) At the bottom is an MWE document (I have today's TeX Live and I'm
> >> using LuaLaTeX).  I do not currently have access to Windows so the
> >> NVDA screen reader is not an option.  On Linux, Okular does not read
> >> the math correctly
> >
> >
> > You might do better to target pdf 1.7 and UA-1 rather than UA-2
> > or at least if using UA-2 add an Alt to the Formula (which is the default
> > with UA-1) by adding
> >
> > tagging-setup={ math/alt/use,math/setup=mathml-SE}
> >
> > alt/use specifies that LaTeX should add an Alt property to every Formula (with the TeX source of that expression)
> >
> > this is not as good as tagging with mathml, but better than nothing.
> >
> > Note however that what matters most is the screen readers used by your (human) not the one you have access to, so that may be nvda or jaws on windows.
> >
> > You could try orca with  firefox 148 or higher (currently in beta) which has support for tagged pdf, although
> > I haven't had great success with orca so far.
> >
> >
> >
> >>
> >> and does not read the alt text or "Black bird." at
> >> all.  Are there better screen reader options?  I'd sure like to do the
> >> highest PDF standard.  At the moment I am developing my docs without
> >> being able to know what is the outcome and it is awkward.
> >
> >
> >
> > I can recommend using ngpdf  https://ngpdf.com/loadFile to test your file, that will show the tag structure
> > and also the derived HTML file, which is a reasonable representation of the accessible view of the document.
> >
> >
> >>
> >>  (I have
> >> not tried converting to HTML and using an HTML reader.  I hope to post
> >> the PDF for free download.)
> >>
> >> 2) Can alt text contain math?  If not, I must write "x times y" and
> >> "the sine function"?
> >
> >
> >
> > As noted above latex will add the tex source as alt text if you specify pdf 1.7 and UA-1 or if you explicitly set
> > math/alt/use key to true.
> >
> >
> >>
> >>
> >> 3) Is there any way to influence screen readers outside of textual?
> >> To give a concrete example, I would like to get a pause after
> >> execution of ltx-talk's \frametitle{..} command.
> >
> >
> > if the title is marked up as a title you would hope the screen reader announces it as such and adds a suitable pause.
> >
> >
> >>
> >>   I see that the
> >> package's documentation recommends periods in the title but in the the
> >> typographic tradition that I am used to, headlines don't have periods.
> >> Is this just a matter of hoping that screen readers improve over time?
> >
> >
> > Check the tagging of the title, if it is tagged as a heading it ought to be automatically set off from the following text.
> >
> >>
> >>
> >> 4) Is there some best practices document that folks could recommend?
> >> For example, googling for guidelines on writing alt text gives many
> >> results but even the most high-profile ones seem to me to be both
> >> vague and contradictory.
> >
> >
> > vague and contradictory unfortunately describes many of the documents in this area
> > both the standards themselves and tutorials from various places. Things are getting better though.
> >
> >> For instance, some advocate a character
> >> limit while others recommend extensive description. I confess that I
> >> find it impossible to briefly describe a mathematical graph of the
> >> area under f(x)=sin(x) between x=a and x=b broken into ten Reimann
> >> boxes, particularly without mathematical symbols.
> >
> >
> > well exactly. You can use unicode math symbols in an alt text but not math layout
> > but mostly what you lose is navigation. You can't really follow a full math display
> > in a "one take" reading of an alt text whatever text you place in the attribute.
> > Using mathml allows the reader to navigate into the expression,
> > reading subterms at their pace and in their order. But of course if you are using a screen reader that doesn't understand the tagging that's just a theoretical benefit, and using Alt is all you have.
> >
> >>
> >> In general, the
> >> advice I have seen online seems more directed to business documents
> >> than to documents for math or science.
> >
> >
> > that and often assuming that the tagging is being done by hand by remediating the document after production rather than being added as part of the typesetting as in LaTeX
> >>
> >>
> >> 5) There is sometimes a tradeoff between what is useful for
> >> visually-impaired users and others.  To again name a concrete example
> >> from ltx-talk, I sometimes show a sequence of graphics as slides
> >> inside of a frame to illustrate changes (say, developing the arc
> >> length as a limit by showing line segments become shorter).  Only the
> >> graphic changes, not the surrounding text.  I understand screen
> >> readers to re-read the entire slide; certainly Okular does.
> >
> >
> > That sounds wrong, the default behaviour is just to read the last slide (which is what you want for gradual reveals)
> > If you have more complicated interactions with text coming and going it has some  possibility to control which text
> > gets marked to be read and which is marked as Artifact.
> >
> >> That's
> >> pretty tedious after five slides.  Does anyone have advice about
> >> working through that?
> >
> >
> > It's not supposed to happen.
> >
> >>
> >>
> >> Thank you,
> >> Jim Hefferon
> >>
> >> ................ Example document .............
> >
> >
> > A video of your document unchanged being read by nvda (from foxit) is at
> >
> > https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/wbyumxcv16wk8vozlox9f/jh1.mp4?rlkey=qrmmrykcdv964zyvrpakvsy3m&st=0igpgs0v&dl=0
> >
> >
> >>
> >>
> >> \DocumentMetadata{
> >>   lang        = en,
> >>   pdfstandard = ua-2,
> >>   pdfstandard = a-4f, %or a-4
> >>   tagging=on,
> >>   tagging-setup={math/setup=mathml-SE}
> >> }
> >> \documentclass{article}
> >> \usepackage{unicode-math}
> >> \usepackage{graphicx}
> >> \usepackage{mathtools}
> >>
> >> \begin{document}
> >> Red dog.
> >> \begin{equation*}
> >>   \int_{x=0}^1 x^2\,dx=\pi
> >> \end{equation*}
> >> Blue fish.
> >> \begin{center}
> >>   % \includegraphics[alt={Show the integral $\int x^2 dx$ as a
> >> graph.}]{example-image-a}
> >>   \includegraphics[alt={Show the integral as a graph.}]{example-image-a}
> >> \end{center}
> >> Black bird.
> >> \end{document}
> >>
> >> --
> >> "Does not the Captain seek your advice sir?"
> >> "Not always," said Stephen.
>
>
>
> --
> "Does not the Captain seek your advice sir?"
> "Not always," said Stephen.



-- 
"Does not the Captain seek your advice sir?"
"Not always," said Stephen.