Free Webinar: Practical Steps to Accessible Math and Science PDFs
Sponsored by YuJa
A student using a screen reader opens your lecture notes and hears “x squared plus...” followed by silence, or a string of meaningless symbols. Equations, Greek letters, matrices and labeled diagrams are central to math and science courses, and they’re also the hardest content to make work with assistive technology. A PDF can look perfect on screen and still give a screen reader nothing to work with.
LaTeX is the standard tool for writing technical documents, and it’s getting much better at producing PDFs that work for every reader. In this live Q&A session on November 16th at 11:30 am EST, Joseph Wright of the LaTeX Project shares the latest progress on generating tagged PDFs directly from LaTeX. That includes structure that lets assistive technology move through headings, lists and tables, and math that can be read aloud and explored piece by piece, not skipped. He’ll also cover practical steps faculty and support staff can take today with documents they already have.
Session Objectives
By the end of this session, participants will be able to:
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Explain why math and science PDFs often fail accessibility requirements under ADA Title II, and what makes a PDF truly accessible to assistive technology.
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Apply current LaTeX tools and settings to produce tagged, more accessible PDFs from existing course documents.
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Identify practical next steps and resources for building accessible STEM content workflows at their institution.
Bring your questions and leave with a clear path to creating STEM materials every student can use.
Speaker:
Joseph Wright
Senior Lecturer & Team Member of the LaTeX Project
University of East Anglia