Accessible Open Textbooks in Math-Heavy Disciplines

Poster Author(s):

Richard Zach

Institution(s):

University of Calgary

The authoring platform of choice in many math-heavy disciplines is LaTeX. It produces typeset documents of excellent quality and handles formulas and mathematical diagrams extremely well.
Unfortunately, it only produces PDF output. To produce accessible OER from LaTeX, the content must either be converted into a format that can produce both PDF output for printing and accessible HTML for readers with accessibility requirements, or tools to produce HTML from LaTeX directly must be used. The choice of tools is restricted, and any conversion is requires extensive work.
Mathematical formulas and diagrams raise special issues. While diagrams can typically be provided with text descriptions, formulas must be presented in a way that is accessible to assistive technology such as screen readers.

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