Re: Accesibility of PDF files & editing them

There are MathML plugins that work with assistive technologies or speech
components - for example techexplorer can be used with viavoice to provide
speech output, and Aster is a program that provides a good voice interface to
mathematics, developed by TV Raman in his PhD work.

More details from the MathML group should be available - their home page is
http://www.w3.org/Math/ and links to things like an Implementation and
Interroperability report.

I don't know what the architecture for plugins is within PDF.

cheers

Charles McCN

On Tue, 2 Apr 2002, Loretta Guarino Reid wrote:


  By the time the information is in PDF, it is extremely hard to reconstruct the
  corresponding latex. However, I have heard latex or MathML suggested as the
  appropriate Alt description for an equation in a PDF file. I'm not aware of
  any assistive technology that would do anything but treat it as text, however.

  	Loretta

  > Hi Loretta and all:
  >
  >      I have a slightly off topic (specific topic of alt text/forms in PDF) =
  > but it may be related.  I was interested lately in reading PDF's that =
  > contain equations.  One example is
  > Richard Feynman's nobel lecture
  > http://www.nobel.se/physics/laureates/1965/feynman-lecture.pdf
  > The Adobe translation tools and accessibility  plugin work well on the =
  > text portion, but the equations, as one might guess, get a bit garbled.
  > I was wondering if there might be a PDF to latex converter perhaps?
  > Might there be other suggestions?
  >
  > Thanks, =20
  >
  > Steve
  >
  > Steve McCaffrey
  > Senior Programmer/Analyst
  > ITS
  > NYSED


-- 
Charles McCathieNevile    http://www.w3.org/People/Charles  phone: +61 409 134 136
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative     http://www.w3.org/WAI  fax: +33 4 92 38 78 22
Location: 21 Mitchell street FOOTSCRAY Vic 3011, Australia
(or W3C INRIA, Route des Lucioles, BP 93, 06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France)

Received on Wednesday, 10 April 2002 14:58:47 UTC