[Athen] LaTeX to PDF

[Sean Keegan]

> Is there a solution for accessing mathML in PDFs? I didn't think this was possible. I thought the only accessible forms of mathML

>  were in Web pages and certain Daisy and EPUB readers.


Right now, the specification for MathML in PDF is not formally established. The ISO 32000-2 specification, which is being worked on, is expected to address MathML as a functional component of the PDF specification:
http://www.aiim.org/Research-and-Publications/standards/committees/PDFUA/Technical-Implementation-Guide#Section7

That being said, this only resolves the issue for the PDF file and does not speak to support by assistive computer technologies. So, you could have a PDF document that conforms to the specification and yet still not be "accessible" to assistive technologies.

At this time, DAISY+MathML documents can be read with a few conforming DAISY readers and there is also some support for screen-readers when reading MathML on Web pages using the MathPlayer plug-in for IE. While ePub 3 has included MathML in the spec, I am not aware of any current assistive technologies that will read/parse the math in an ePub publication. There is also still limited support for MathML rendering in current ePub readers: http://www.mathjax.org/resources/epub-readers/

Take care,
Sean

Sean Keegan
Associate Director, Assistive Technology
Office of Accessible Education - Stanford University