I Tried Making a Document Accessible
Accessibility is essential in document design, enabling people with disabilities or those using Assistive Technology (AT) like screen readers to access content.
I ported Undergradmath, a concise 2-page math writing guide by Jim Hefferon11 https://gitlab.com/jim.hefferon/undergradmath, to Typst22 https://github.com/johanvx/typst-undergradmath. I wanted to make my Typst port accessible, but wasn’t sure how—until I read the official Typst Accessibility Guide33 https://typst.app/docs/guides/accessibility. It turned out to be simpler than expected.
The key is using semantic markup to clarify document structure. For example, use <h1>, <h2> tags in HTML or #, ## in Markdown for headings. In WYSIWYG editors like Microsoft Word, apply Styles linked to outline levels (e.g., Heading 1 for level 1). Just changing font size or alignment isn’t enough.
Always provide alternative text (alt text) for non-text content like images, charts, and equations. Typst’s alt argument makes this easy. For math, I write alt text as I’d read the formula aloud. I used an LLM to generate alt texts for all equations44 See the commit e144061., and the results were good.
Other tips include ensuring color contrast and adding captions to figures. Check out the Accessibility Guide for more.
The accessible version of my Typst port is a PDF/UA-1 file available at GitHub Release, compiled with --pdf-standard ua-1.