Blind and Visually Impaired Community
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How to make scientific articles or pdfs read in the correct order? (self.Blind)
submitted by 33ducks
Hi there,
I'm not really sure if this is the right place to ask, but I feel like you all would have some experience with this. I use the audio accessibility feature when doing my class readings because for some reason hearing it helps me not zone out and actually absorb the material. However, I've noticed that especially with scientific articles, there are often columns and diagram boxes that mess up the order that the sections are read in. It can be really annoying and confusing, and so far the only work-around I've found is highlighting the sections individually to have them read, but that can be quite inconvenient. Is there something I can do to make the pdfs more accessible to the reader? I am using a mac if that matters.
Thanks!
I'm not really sure if this is the right place to ask, but I feel like you all would have some experience with this. I use the audio accessibility feature when doing my class readings because for some reason hearing it helps me not zone out and actually absorb the material. However, I've noticed that especially with scientific articles, there are often columns and diagram boxes that mess up the order that the sections are read in. It can be really annoying and confusing, and so far the only work-around I've found is highlighting the sections individually to have them read, but that can be quite inconvenient. Is there something I can do to make the pdfs more accessible to the reader? I am using a mac if that matters.
Thanks!
MostlyBlindGamer 4 points 1y ago
The short answer is "not really."
Scientific papers are written and typeset in LaTeX and then basically printed. The focus is on matching the publications formatting patterns and not on accessibility.
There's very little work in making these files accessible by creating properly tagged PDFs with the correct reading order.
If you have Adobe Acrobat Pro you can manually tag the files and fix the reading order yourself, but that didn't seem like it would be worth your effort.
Unless somebody else knows something I don't, I think you've found the best solution.
Scientific papers are written and typeset in LaTeX and then basically printed. The focus is on matching the publications formatting patterns and not on accessibility.
There's very little work in making these files accessible by creating properly tagged PDFs with the correct reading order.
If you have Adobe Acrobat Pro you can manually tag the files and fix the reading order yourself, but that didn't seem like it would be worth your effort.
Unless somebody else knows something I don't, I think you've found the best solution.
33ducks [OP] 2 points 1y ago
thank you! it’s a shame there’s not a better solution.
TechnicalPragmatist 1 points 1y ago
Get them transcribed. Or etexted. This is for school right? Don’t you have a disability office? Ask them to turn this pdf in to a word document and make it meaningful. An actual person or persons will scan it and fix it up and put it in a word doc or that’s how it works and then returns it to you in a word document or text file.
MostlyBlindGamer 1 points 1y ago
Indeed. The only other thing you can do is ask the authors or publishers for a copy in a different format.
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