A framework for improving the accessibility of research papers on arXiv.org
Authors: Shamsi Brinn (arXiv, Cornell University), Christopher Cameron (arXiv, Cornell University), David Fielding (arXiv, Cornell University), Charles Frankston (arXiv, Cornell University), Alison Fromme (arXiv, Cornell University), Peter Huang (arXiv, Cornell University), Mark Nazzaro (arXiv, Cornell University), Stephanie Orphan (arXiv, Cornell University), Steinn Sigurdsson (arXiv, Cornell University), Ryan Tay (arXiv, Cornell University), Miranda Yang (arXiv, Cornell University), Qianyu Zhou (arXiv, Cornell University)
Abstract: The research content hosted by arXiv is not fully accessible to everyone due to disabilities and other barriers. This matters because a significant proportion of people have reading and visual disabilities, it is important to our community that arXiv is as open as possible, and if science is to advance, we need wide and diverse participation. In addition, we have mandates to become accessible, and accessible content benefits everyone. In this paper, we will describe the accessibility problems with research, review current mitigations (and explain why they aren't sufficient), and share the results of our user research with scientists and accessibility experts. Finally, we will present arXiv's proposed next step towards more open science: offering HTML alongside existing PDF and TeX formats. An accessible HTML version of this paper is also available at https://info.arxiv.org/about/accessibility_research_report.html
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