Re: Org mode export accessibility (was: About 'inline special blocks')

[Tim Cross]

Ihor Radchenko <yantar92@gmail.com> writes:

> Tim Cross <theophilusx@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> Sadly, org isn't great from an accessibility perspective. This is
>> something I would like to see improved, but it is a huge and complex
>> task. There are some 'easy' winds we could try. For example, org still
>> defaults to using the <b></b> and <i></i> tags instead of
>> <strong></strong> and <em></em>. Likewise, we should move to html5 as
>> the default, not xhtml, but last time I raised that, there was
>> considerable push back to stick with xhtml. We also need complete
>> overhaul of the use of aria tags and numerous other areas. As I said, a
>> very large job which is complex and extremely time consuming. 
>
> I will not argue about html5 switch - I don't have enough knowledge to
> weigh on this.
>
> However, can't we at least address accessibility issues with the
> existing HTML export? A good starting point could be identifying what
> can be improved in ox-html.el.
>

Yes, we can probably make some incremental improvements. However, it is
a complex and difficult area and I suspect to really improve the
situation, we likely need a major re-design. A big part of the challenge
is how to enable authors to add the right level of accessibility
'tagging', but at the same time, not lose one of the main advantages of
org mode i.e. simplicity and ease of syntax. 

>> Sadly, I'm not sure there is a lot we can do with accessibility and PDFs
>> in org mode. This is the one area where TeX/LaTeX does a poor job. Last
>> time I looked, there was considerable discussion about what to do from
>> an accessibility standpoint in the TeX community, but seemed to be
>> little or very slow progress (not a criticism of the efforts of members
>> of that community, but rather a reflection of how complicated this stuff
>> is).
>
> From Org perspective, we can do what is available in the exported
> format. If LaTeX is not great from accessibility point of view, is there
> a better format? Or are there things we can do to improve situation in
> ox-latex.el?
>

As I understand it (which isn't brilliant), the core problem is more to
do with how the LaTeX/TeX engine processes the input to generate the
postscript and pdf output. Modern PDFs have a wealth of internal tagging
which simply sin't supported via the tex -> pdf pathway. The matter is
made slightly worse by a lack of built-in support within latex/tex for
accessibility 'tags' (similar to the aria tags for web content). 

> What about other export backends?
>

To be honest, no idea. I'm certainly not an expert in these areas. While
I am impacted more by lack of accessibility, unfortunately, that doesn't
make you an expert.

I do feel that in order to get reasonable accessibility levels, it is
probably something which needs to be baked in as part of the overall
design and not something which can be added later. This isn't really
feasible. Things can probably be slightly improved, but I doubt org mode
and the documents it produces will ever be particularly good from an
accessibility perspective.