HTML as an Accessible Format for Papers (2023)
info.arxiv.org
HTML as an Accessible Format for Papers (2023)
1–10 of 141 posts
Re: HTML as an Accessible Format for Papers (2023)
#2Accessibility barriers in research are not new, but they are urgent. The message we have heard from our community is that arXiv can have the most impact in the shortest time by offering HTML papers alongside the existing PDF.
Re: HTML as an Accessible Format for Papers (2023)
#3I was reading through this article too, glad to have found it on here
Re: HTML as an Accessible Format for Papers (2023)
#4Accessibility barriers in research are not new, but they are urgent. The message we have heard from our community is that arXiv can have the most impact in the shortest time by offering HTML papers alongside the existing PDF.
Hello, I was going through html versions of my preprints on Arxiv, thank you for all that you guys do
Please do let me know if the community could contribute through any means for the same
Re: HTML as an Accessible Format for Papers (2023)
#5Is this new or somehow updated? HTML versions of papers have been available for several years now.
EDIT: indeed, it was introduced in 2023: https://blog.arxiv.org/2023/12/21/accessibility-update-arxiv...
Re: HTML as an Accessible Format for Papers (2023)
#6Is this new or somehow updated? HTML versions of papers have been available for several years now. EDIT: indeed, it was introduced in 2023: https://blog.arxiv.org/2023/12/21/accessibility-update-arxiv...
From the paper...
Why "experimental" HTML?
Did you know that 90% of submissions to arXiv are in TeX format, mostly LaTeX? That poses a unique accessibility challenge: to accurately convert from TeX—a very extensible language used in myriad unique ways by authors—to HTML, a language that is much more accessible to screen readers and text-to-speech software, screen magnifiers, and mobile devices. In addition to the technical challenges, the conversion must be both rapid and automated in order to maintain arXiv’s core service of free and fast dissemination.
Re: HTML as an Accessible Format for Papers (2023)
#7Can't help but wonder if this was motivated in part by people feeding papers into LLMs for summary, search, or review. PDF is awful for LLMs. You're effectively pigeonholed into using (PAYING for) Adobe's proprietary app and models which barely hold a candle to Gemini or Claude. There are PDF-to-text converters, but they often munge up the formatting.
Re: HTML as an Accessible Format for Papers (2023)
#8>Did you know that 90% of submissions to arXiv are in TeX format, mostly LaTeX? That poses a unique accessibility challenge: to accurately convert from TeX—a very extensible language used in myriad unique ways by authors—to HTML, a language that is much more accessible to screen readers and text-to-speech software, screen magnifiers, and mobile devices.
Challenging. Good work!
Re: HTML as an Accessible Format for Papers (2023)
#9Unfortunately I didn't see the recommendation there on what can be done for old papers. I checked, and only my papers after 2022 have an HTML version. I wish they'd make some kind of 'try html' button for those.
Re: HTML as an Accessible Format for Papers (2023)
#10Maybe unpopular, but papers should be in n markdown flavor to be determined. Just to have them more machine readable.