Toward Accessible Scientific Documents Via Arxiv.Org
1. Background
I access research papers from arxiv.org multiple times a week. Having originally worked on access to STEM content for my PhD over 30 years ago, I find it both encouraging and challenging as I continue to acquire access to the research materials I need.
As the Digital Library of the future, arxiv is committed to improving the state of STEM Access; see the Accessibility report they recently published. A few months ago after talking to them about their goals, I wrote down some ideas that would make my own access to arxiv a smoother experience; posting them here so folks in the STEM Accessibility community can expand and build on these ideas.
2. Goal
Make Arxiv a destination for Accessible Scientific documents where blind students and researchers can consume the latest technical content via alternative modes of interaction that best suit their individual needs.
3. Making The Portal Easy To Use
A REST API to automate the download of multiple formats.
4. Making The Content Progressively Easy To Consume
- Build PDFs using PDFLaTeX rather than the DVI->PS->PDF pipeline.
- Ensure that PDFs are one-column layout.
- Build HTML+Math content from LaTeX using TeX4HT and friends.
- Build out a collection of high-quality LaTeX macros for specific sub-domains in CS and Math so authors dont need to invent their own marcos.
- Allow authors to contribute macros for new notation as it gets invented.
- Incorporate Speech Rules Engine (SRE) from Volker Sorge.
- Explore ChromeBooks where ChromeVox is already built-in.
5. Target Experience
Once we have:
- Arxiv: building PDF and HTML the way we desire.
- Client-side setup recipe – initially for a ChromeBook or Linux running my present environment (see final Teaser section).
- Mathjax and SRE injected at the right points on the backend at arxiv.
The target audience should be able to:
- Search and discover content on arxiv.
- View and consume content from Arxiv via the browser of choice with spoken feedback built-in.
6. Iterate And improve
- Test the flow with a few initial members of the target audience to discover the pain-points and fix them.
- Communicate what we learn via arxiv given the traffic and start publicizing the solution.
- Rinse and repeat ….
7. Research Areas
- Graphs – start with Graphviz — Dot Graphics.
- Graphs as in X-Y plots — there has been some work on data Sonification — but it's still early and exploratory.
8. References
- Speech Rule Engine from Volker Sorge.
- MathJax
- TeX4HT On Debian Linux, this is in package
texlive-plain-generic.list— installed as/usr/bin/xhlatex. - Emacspeak — includes support for Math via SRE — AKA poor man's AsTeR.
- Teaser: Heard from a bird: Speaking Of Mathematics: #emacspeak #STEM Again DECTalk → Again AsTeR.
