LaTeX/PDF accessibility updates?

[Mitch Keller]

Hi all,

Sean flagged on -dev last week that there's (maybe) been some advancement in tagged PDF support coming out of LaTeX. See this thread: https://groups.google.com/g/pretext-dev/c/eeqb7f87HzQ/m/NdXQq-xzAgAJ

I'd love for Michael Cantino to do a test of one of the PDFs that are coming out. When I questioned the quality of things on Bluesky the other day, someone indicated that NVDA is the only screenreader that can handle the way the MathML is tagged into the PDFs. Would be nice to know what the state of that is as well as a comparison between the MathJax in HTML experience and the MathML in PDF experience (and then perhaps things can go back to -dev if there's some in-between processing that PreTeXt can insert into the .tex file that's already being done for EPUB if it would improve the quality of PDF that comes out).

Mitch

[Michael Cantino]

Yeah, I’d be curious to see what these PDFs look like. NVDA doesn’t read MathML natively. They’re presumably using Neil Soiffer’s MathCAT add-on for NVDA. I’m not sure if they’re doing anything else special to read the MathML, but I guess I’ll find out. I can reach out to Neil if I run into issues.

Michael Cantino

On Nov 24, 2025, at 10:56 AM, Mitch Keller <mi...@rellek.net> wrote:

Hi all,

Sean flagged on -dev last week that there's (maybe) been some advancement in tagged PDF support coming out of LaTeX. See this thread: https://groups.google.com/g/pretext-dev/c/eeqb7f87HzQ/m/NdXQq-xzAgAJ

I'd love for Michael Cantino to do a test of one of the PDFs that are coming out. When I questioned the quality of things on Bluesky the other day, someone indicated that NVDA is the only screenreader that can handle the way the MathML is tagged into the PDFs. Would be nice to know what the state of that is as well as a comparison between the MathJax in HTML experience and the MathML in PDF experience (and then perhaps things can go back to -dev if there's some in-between processing that PreTeXt can insert into the .tex file that's already being done for EPUB if it would improve the quality of PDF that comes out).

Mitch

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[Sean Fitzpatrick]

I had forgotten about the accessibility group! Doh! 

I'm glad people are working on accessible PDF, but I feel like it's always at about the same stage as controlled fusion. 

Our Accessible Learning Centre often asks for a PDF copy for screen reader use, but they use Kurzweil. I've often wondered if that's useful at all. 

--

[Michael Cantino]

I've barely used Kurzweil for text-to-speech. It's pretty common at a lot of universities. When I was at PCC, we used Read&Write instead, but it's basically the same thing. I'm not quite sure how Kurzweil would read the math in a PDF. I would think the best case scenario is that it would be reading some kind of alt text in place of the math expression. I think that's as close as we've gotten to "accessible" math in a PDF for screen readers. In other environments (EPUB, HTML, Word), the screen reader can provide actual braille notation for the math expression, and the expression can be explored with much more control than you'd get from just alt text.

Assuming Kurzweil is reading any of the math in the PDF, it's still probably helpful for students using plain old text to speech. Even if it's skipping the math content, a sighted student with dyslexia just has to focus on the expressions that are being skipped. It's a much different experience for blind users relying entirely on their screen reader. 

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pretext-a11y/CAH%2BNcPYzweMOmb%2BAzzTxkzmpW%3Dr76K%2BwpacfTUUcgQD4HOD-Sg%40mail.gmail.com.

[Oscar Levin]

I'm attaching a tex file and the resulting PDF that Tim Prescott shared with me.  It does sound like this works better, even for math, with NVDA at least.

Tim mentioned the following though:

"The tex file does have a commented out "math-alt-use" option in the DocumentMetadata.  Including it is necessary to pass the validation of Ally in Blackboard (our LMS) because Ally views all math formulas as images that need alt text.  But then NVDA reads the alt text instead of the formula you heard, which ends up being a bit worse.  People have asked Ally to not view pdf math formulas as images; we'll see where that gets us."

Anyway, I thought this might be a good starting point for further testing.  If it really is as easy as adding this documentmetadata tag at the top of a latex document, then it seems we should get PreTeXt to do this, at least optionally (and use LuaTeX as an option, I suppose).

[Dana Ernst]

Out of curiosity, can anyone compile the file that Oscar attached? Several of the folks in my department (some Mac, some Linux, some Window users) are unable to compile any file that has \DocumentMetadata in it. I know of one person in my department that this works for.  However, I can get it to compile in Overleaf.

Dana

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pretext-a11y/d5e103ea-1363-4f31-b67a-9dc6278f6b5fn%40googlegroups.com.
<quadraticDemo.tex><quadraticDemo.pdf>

[Joseph DiMuro]

Hi Dana. It works for me. I'm using Windows 11, and I'm using TeX Live 2025 with LuaTeX. And it looks like Adobe Pro considers the resulting PDF to be accessible (though that tells us nothing about how it works with NVDA).

Dana, do you know which version of LaTeX your colleagues are using? The accessibility features in LaTeX are fairly new; maybe your colleagues aren't using a version that is recent enough.

-Joseph

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pretext-a11y/037CAD8D-A018-4F22-938D-23F916F92FA9%40gmail.com.

[Dana Ernst]

I’m running TeX Live 2025 (Mac) and two of my colleagues are running TeX Live 2022 (Mac) and TeX Live 2024 (Linux). The person running TeX Live 2022 is the one that is able to compile.

Dana

[Michael Cantino]

Hi everyone,

Here's a quick demo of reading the PDF with NVDA (MathCAT installed). It works. 

Couple other things I found.

• It only worked for me when opening the PDF in Adobe Acrobat. When I opened the PDF in my browser, the math would not read correctly.
• JAWS cannot read this math. That's a little odd because JAWS is also using MathCAT now, but I wouldn't be surprised if Neil is able to add new features to MathCAT for NVDA faster than they can get approved and added to JAWS. 

Michael

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pretext-a11y/51C04938-9387-408D-82FA-A9B757346128%40gmail.com.

[Mitch Keller]

Thanks, Michael! In the video, you mention MathJax. Can you share more about how MathJax is involved with what NVDA and MathCAT are doing here? I’m particularly curious about if the math content navigation features that MathJax provides become available to someone with this type of PDF (when using Adobe Acrobat…with NVDA…with MathCAT).

Mitch

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pretext-a11y/CAFjhOegO3zUO0D5C9eWxUhJrsCcK9%2B6LxKmth9BL-BsVk9yp2g%40mail.gmail.com.

-- 
Mitch Keller
mi...@rellek.net

http://www.rellek.net/

[Michael Cantino]

Hi Mitch,

I don't think I mentioned MathJax, but I did say MathCAT a few times. In the PDF, you can walk through the different parts of the expression like you can with MathJax. You can adjust the navigation style and the speech rules in the MathCAT settings. You don't get any of the visual accessibility features that you get with MathJax, as far as I can tell.

Michael

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pretext-a11y/5129C912-821A-40FB-B7C6-006030FCB397%40rellek.net.

[Mitch Keller]

Ah, that makes more sense. I must have just misheard. It is good to hear that the expression tree walking is available with MathCAT.

[Alexei Kolesnikov]

Dear All,

Here are a couple of notes from my testing.

1. The primitive \DocumentMetadata is available on a newer version of TeX. For whatever reason, the update process from the older version for me was not smooth (with MiKTeX), I had to scrub and reinstall.

2. The TeX file will compile with pdflatex, but the quality of speech strings is much, much worse than with LuaLaTeX. (I initially did not pay attention to the compiler and was puzzled by the results.)

3. I include the speech strings from NVDA with MathCAT below. Support for mathematics beyond school algebra is getting better, but is not completely "there". For example, the contour integral formula is completely skipped.

4. The Speech Rule Engine for MathJax has more robust support for mid- and higher-level college math. I include the speech strings for the integrals. For PreTeXt compiled into html, this is what the screen reader in the browser would read.

5. When uploading the compiled file to BlackBoard (our LMS), I get a "medium" accessibility score of 54%, because the "document contains images without description". All the math formulas are treated somehow as images, even though the PDF file can be (imperfectly) read by at least one screen reader.

Best regards,

--Alexei

Speech strings from NVDA:

"""

Some math formulas with LaTeX, NVDA, and MathCAT
Quadratic formula:        x         is equal to         the fraction with numerator         negative         b         plus or minus         the square root of         b        squared  minus  4           eigh                  c        and denominator 2           eigh  
Integrals:        ∫︂ sub  negative infinity         to the infinity         power         e        raised to the negative         x        squared power                  d                  x        is equal to         the square root of 2   pi      
and      
.
Matrix:        the 2 by 2 determinant         row 1         eigh        b        row 2         c        d        is equal to          eigh                  d         minus          b                  c      
.

"""

Speech strings from SRE for the integrals:

"""

the integral from negative normal infinity to normal infinity of e raised to the exponent negative x squared end exponent d x equals the square root of 2 pi

the contour integral over partial differential S of F right arrow times d r right arrow equals the double integral over S of open paren nabla times F right arrow close paren times d S right arrow

"""

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pretext-a11y/99DD4B95-83F9-430A-A92C-83475D919606%40rellek.net.

[Michael Cantino]

I took a look at the PDF Alexei shared and had the same results with the speech output from NVDA. I thought I should add that the braille output for all the new expressions (not the quadratic formula) was messy. After the first integral, there were 8 gibberish braille characters before it provided the rest of the braille transcription. Like Alexei noted, I couldn't get it to read the contour integral at all. The matrix is all shown on one line, with some 8-dot braille character used to indicate the beginning of the second row.

Michael