Re: org exported pdf files

[Tim Cross <theophilusx@gmail.com>]

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.