Web-ALAP: A Web-based LaTeX Editor for Blind Individuals

Abstract

In recent years, web-based platforms have become popular for LaTeX document authoring and presentation due to their hassle-free environments and collaboration features. Unfortunately, currently available platforms are not accessible to persons with vision impairments (PVIs) due to poor screen reader and keyboard support. In this paper, we present Web-Accessible LaTeX-based Authoring and Presentation (Web-ALAP), a web version of ALAP that makes creating mathematical documents accessible to PVIs. Web-ALAP provides assistive features like speech-based prompts, automatic narration of the error message along with the line number for debugging, and essential keyboard shortcuts. More importantly, the integrated “Math Mode” library offers a natural language description of the mathematical content within a document, which is not done by other screen readers. This feature enables PVIs to find and fix semantic errors in equations as well. We discuss the design choices in Web-ALAP and evaluate its features with 10 visually impaired participants. The results show that users perform better while working with Web-ALAP as opposed to another web-based LaTeX editor (Overleaf).