Welcome to M. Peszynska website with notes on LaTeX to CANVAS Accessibility.

List of documents and handouts

In this page we provide links to tools to make documents created in LaTeX accessible in CANVAS.
In the first step we describe how to make plain LaTeX (no math) processed to PDF accessible.
Next we discuss how to make LaTeX documents with substantial math content accessible through CANVAS.
Please note that this page is under construction, and some links might be (occasionally) broken.

We provide

• Zip archive accessibble.zip with various notes, tools, scripts, and templates. This zip file is available at the link zip file In this zip archive we have the following items.
• The document accessible-more-more.tex describes the efforts to make simple LaTeX (no or little math) processed to PDF accessible. We also address the use of LaTeX (or other) code within CANVAS. We annotate how CANVAS interprets this accessibility. The impact of different LaTeX elements on DA is described.
• The document LaTeX2CANVAS.tex describes how to use LaTeXML to convert LaTeX document to HTML (semantic, HTML 5). It is also available at HTML version of LaTeX2CANVAS document.
• We provide an example of a handout converted to HTML at LaTeX2CANVAS Handout example in HTML
• For users at Oregon State we can also share access to our CANVAS sandbox with a list of examples how to make things work, and a video with a demo (Audio is not available when the Immersive Screen Reader reads the page).
• Installation of latexml on Linux is "easy"
  sudo apt-get update
  sudo apt-get install latexml
• Installation of latexml on Windows is "hmm". You need to use PowerShell and have admin privileges. Instructions per OSU IT support (I can direct you to the specific very helpful individual sysadmin).
  • Install via Chocolatey package; (might be easier but you cannot run shell scripts and might have to type commands when using latexml)
    https://chocolatey.org/install
    Similar as instructions on https://math.nist.gov/~BMiller/LaTeXML/get.html (updated), run first
    choco install strawberryperl --version 5.42.2.1
    choco install latexml (or choco install latexml --version 0.8.8.1); this ensures correct versions
    Once latexml is installed, restart the powershell terminal
    Use "cd" to navigate to the location of the LaTeX documents
    Via https://math.nist.gov/~BMiller/LaTeXML/ussage.html, run
    latexml --dest=resultdoc.xml mytexdoc
  • On MAC see the ticket INC0856505 at OSU IT Help system.
  • Via wsl (Windows Subsystem for Linux)
    Open Powershell as administrator
    wsl --install
    wsl --instal debian
    (now you will set a username and password, might need to run wsl.exe -d Debian)
    cd
    sudo apt-get update
    sudo apt-get install latexml
    (to confirm, run whereis latexml )
    (results should be similar to (ONID)@(DEVICE_NAME):/mnt/c/Users/(ONID)/desktop$ whereis latexml latexml: /usr/bin/latexml /usr/share/man/man1/latexml.1p.gz
    YOU MAY WANT TO HAVE also csh or bash or tcsh installed so you can run scripts STEP1.csh etc
• Extra links:
  • How to test your HTML? It is helpful to validate your HTML at https://validator.w3.org/ for semantic correctness that accessibility checkers may flag. This tool is free.
  • How to test your HTML for accessibility? There are some "free" tools. Many are, actually, not free, after you use them a few times during a given day. For example, https://www.accessibilitychecker.org/ requires a subscription after you use it a few times in a given day.
    But, this tool https://wave.webaim.org/ will produce a very useful set of reports on the elements of your website.