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An Inclusive and Accessible LaTeX Editor

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Computers Helping People with Special Needs (ICCHP 2018)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 10896))

Abstract

In this paper, we discuss the reasons which led us to propose LaTeX as mathematical notation to visually impaired students and why there is need for an accessible LaTeX editor. We performed an accessibility test for a selection of three LaTeX editors, to investigate their capabilities to satisfy the needs of these users. The evaluation of the results showed that it was necessary to develop an own editor. The first prototype was preliminarily tested, proving that, paying attention to the GUI library and the development environment, it is possible to develop a GUI with a high level of compatibility with assistive technologies like screen readers and magnifiers. The editor achieved a satisfying ranking in the user-tests which encourages further development of the software.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    SZS-LaTeX Editor http://services.szs.kit.edu/szslatex/.

  2. 2.

    wxWidgets: Cross-Platform GUI Library, https://www.wxwidgets.org/.

  3. 3.

    SZS: German acronym for Study Centre for the Visually Impaired - Karlsruhe.

  4. 4.

    The first prototypes of the editor were developed also with Qt library. For a short comparison, see the web page of the SZS-Editor: http://services.szs.kit.edu/szslatex/.

References

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Acknowledgement

We thank Sebastian Peter for being our voluntary partially sighted user for alpha tests and for his useful feedback.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany

    Giuseppe Melfi, Thorsten Schwarz & Rainer Stiefelhagen

Authors
  1. Giuseppe Melfi
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  2. Thorsten Schwarz
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  3. Rainer Stiefelhagen
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Giuseppe Melfi .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Johannes Kepler University Linz, Linz, Austria

    Klaus Miesenberger

  2. National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece

    Georgios Kouroupetroglou

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Melfi, G., Schwarz, T., Stiefelhagen, R. (2018). An Inclusive and Accessible LaTeX Editor. In: Miesenberger, K., Kouroupetroglou, G. (eds) Computers Helping People with Special Needs. ICCHP 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10896. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94277-3_90

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94277-3_90

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-94276-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-94277-3

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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