An Uninteresting Tour Through Why Our Research Papers Aren't Accessible

In HCI, only about 5% of publications have valid alt text, which is even worse in other fields like science, medicine, and engineering.

“Recent work [5, 14, 41] shows that in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), where accessibility research is advocated, only about 5% of publications have valid alt text, which is even worse in other fields like science, medicine, and engineering [51, 54].”

Persistent challenges remain in ensuring that documents prepared in PDF consistently include the metadata necessary to make them accessible to people with disabilities.

“Despite this, persistent challenges remain in ensuring that documents prepared in this format consistently include the metadata necessary to make them accessible to people with disabilities [2, 3].”

Bigham et al. argued authors lacked sufficient incentives to engage with a complex remediation process, largely due to inadequate tooling.

“They argued authors lacked sufficient incentives to engage with a complex remediation process, largely due to inadequate tooling.”

Making PDFs automatically accessible is a messy problem requiring substantial engineering effort.

“Though making PDFs automatically accessible seems like a solvable problem, those who have worked on it have noted that it is a messy problem requiring substantial engineering effort [2].”

Prior works have extensively documented the challenges of using Acrobat, including the high cost of software license, an unintuitive user interface, and the low-quality of automated tags requiring authors to manually review and correct them.

“However, as discussed in the previous subsection, prior works [2, 17] have extensively documented the challenges of using Acrobat, including the high cost of software license, an unintuitive user interface, and the low-quality of automated tags requiring authors to manually review and correct them.”

Authors have long complained about the tedious process of PDF tagging, the difficulty of applying accessibility practices to complex visual elements, the poor usability of existing tools, and even knowing whether they are doing it correctly.

“They have long complained about the tedious process of PDF tagging, the difficulty of applying accessibility practices to complex visual elements, the poor usability of existing tools, and even knowing whether they are doing it correctly [2, 17].”