add pdf accessibility post

_posts/2026-06-11-accessible-pdf-question.md

@@ -0,0 +1,77 @@
+---
+title: Accessibile PDFs?
+tags: accessibility pdf html
+authors: 
+- clontz
+comments: true
+---
+
+A frequent question our community is asked: "How do I make an accessible PDF?"
+
+And, even setting aside the large commercial incentives for certain businesses to make accessible PDFs viable,
+there is a huge community working towards this goal! I have a huge respect for professionals
+like [Deyan Ginev](https://kwarc.info/people/dginev/), codeveloper of [LaTeXML](https://github.com/brucemiller/LaTeXML/)
+and instrumental in the [ar5iv project](https://ar5iv.labs.arxiv.org/) converting arXiv preprints
+to accessibile HTML.
+
+But that's just it -- why are the most significant projects aiming to make accessible scholarly STEM documents
+not aiming for an accessible PDF, but instead aiming to help authors create accessible HTML?
+
+I believe it's because it's just **not possible to create accessible PDFs**.
+
+Accessibility is not a trivial concern.
+But I do my best to help professionals in the mathematical sciences create accessible documents,
+particularly those affected by
+[DoJ's April 2027 deadline for public institutions](https://www.ada.gov/resources/2024-03-08-web-rule/)
+to ensure all web content meets meet WCAG 2.1, Level AA requirements.
+
+For working professionals in the mathematical sciences, it's not trivial or reasonable to become
+an expert in accessibility. So how can we ensure we're doing not meeting our legal obligations, but also
+ensureing we are serving our readers as best we can?
+
+My advice is to connect with communities and technologies that help you author and disseminate
+semantic and accessible HTML-format mathematical documents. As a co-creator of [PreTeXt.Plus](https://pretext.plus)
+I obviously would suggest trying us out, but more crucially I would emphasize the importance of
+choosing any solution that targets accessible HTML, and not "accessible PDF".
+
+While initiatives like the [LaTeX Tagged PDF Project](https://latex3.github.io/tagging-project/) attempt to
+help authors create mathematical PDFs that are as accessible as possible, I'm very concerned that this
+effort is a non-starter. In addition to the
+[numerous examples of failed screenreader parsing of PDFs with math equations](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cxeh5MLNjNU),
+we must consider the accessibility requirement that
+[content reflows to fit the device viewport](https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/Understanding/reflow.html),
+even if the user zooms in to read text at the size they can visually perceive.
+
+How do PDFs meet this standard? Well, in practice, they simply don't! Below I'll illustrate a PDF recently published
+in the open access [Bulletin of the AMS](https://pubs.ams.org/journals/bull),
+and a zoomed-in (via the most popular web browser Chrome) PDF that fails to meet this standard.
+
+![PDF screenshot with all text in the viewport](/assets/images/20260611/image.png)
+
+![further zoomed PDF of the same content that does not reflow content to fit the viewport](/assets/images/20260611/image2.png)
+
+Now, it's technically possible for readers to spend signficant money on proprietary Adobe software that reflows PDF output. 
+But meanwhile, any HTML file will immediately and trivially meet this simple standard.
+To illustrate this point, let's compare the content of the
+Republican National Convention homepage at a standard zoom setting with a zoomed-in view.
+
+![standard zoom setting for RNC.org](/assets/images/20260611/image3.png)
+
+![significantly zoomed in view of RNC.org; all content reflows to fit the device viewport](/assets/images/20260611/image4.png)
+
+Nothing special has been arranged to ensure the accessibility
+of the RNC homepage, other than content happened to be
+authored in HTML rather than
+print-focused PDF. In a nutshell, this is the issue: PDFs
+are not written to be accessible content for all audiences.
+Instead, they are designed for creating print-ready documents
+for fully sighted readers.
+
+So what can we do to help our readers? The first and easiest
+step is to assume that all PDF output is inaccessible, and
+then to look towards solutions that publish HTML instead.
+While writing HTML is not sufficient to guarantee
+accessibility (nothing, not even AI, can replace the human
+responsibility to author useful alt text for graphical
+information), choosing HTML over PDF is an important first
+step to serving all readers.