For our faculty who use LaTeX, accessibility can sometimes be an issue. That is why the CFE has made an Accessible LaTeX Template. It is designed to be used in Overleaf, and you can make a copy of the code and use it as the base for whatever documents you need. It contains several features that will be of use in creating accessible and screen-reader-friendly digital documents:
Headings: The headings have been restructured to make the title H1, sections H2, subsections H3, and so on.
Tags: In addition to the heading tags, the document’s preamble turns on all PDF tags necessary for making documents accessible and screen-reader-friendly.
Math: For equations, the template incorporates the latest MathML functionality for LaTeX, which makes equations natively accessible.
Tables: Tables include header rows or columns (at your discretion).
Links: the link color used is a high contrast shade of blue.
In addition, the template contains documentation which discusses the implementation of alt text for images, accessible colors, and lists.
As a side note, all staff and faculty have access to a pro account on Overleaf. To sign in, go to the Overleaf website, select “Log in”, then “Log in with SSO”, and use your MTU login credentials. This will allow you to make your own copy of the template for use on your own documents, as well as provide a stable, portable LaTeX framework.
To learn more about building accessible documents with LaTex, Overleaf published a blog on the topic called Accessible PDFs with LaTeX. It contains information about best practices for accessible documents, for those looking to incorporate them into their documents without a template.
For those who want to make their LaTeX PDFs into an accessible Canvas content page, look forward to our article on UDOIT for a way to do that at the push of a button. This, and UDOIT’s other features will be contained in a write-up featured in our September 23rd newsletter!
