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I come from a business / digital background, so digital accessibility has always been big on my radar. When I started in science a few years back, I was very surprised to see that arXiv - a service that allows scientists to put their pre-prints (papers before peer review) was not accessible.

This meant that all science papers that were open access (away from journal subscriptions) were only available as PDFs - which means people with digital accessibility needs could not access them.

Access to science should be open to everyone (the pandemic showed us how important this is), and whilst there is a need for papers to undergo the formal peer-review process, that does not mean we can't adhere to global digital accessibility standards.

So, I am extremely glad to see that arXiv is now moving toward digital accessibility, with its second accessibility forum in Sept. 2024. They've also been moving to make papers in HTML format (instead of PDFs only) which adheres to these standards.

If you are interested in accessibility and science, you might consider attending this forum. It's free to all and only requires remote participation.

accessibility2024.arxiv.org/in…

#science #accessibility #digital #astrodon #arxiv

arXiv Accessibility Forum 2024

accessibility2024.arxiv.org
#Accessibility #digital #science #Astrodon #arXiv
This entry was edited (1 month ago)

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in reply to CosmicRami

Mikołaj Hołysz
Mikołaj Hołysz
• •
TBH, arXiv is the only service of its kind that gives us access to the LaTeX source code of the papers they host, and that is incredibly helpful from an accessibility perspective.
in reply to Mikołaj Hołysz

CosmicRami
CosmicRami
• •
@miki yeah but many different types of audiences use arXiv, not just scientists or people who have training in LaTeX. Teachers, students, early career researchers, journalists, etc. all all different users of the service.
@Mikołaj Hołysz
in reply to CosmicRami

Mikołaj Hołysz
Mikołaj Hołysz
• •
I'm not saying better accessibility shouldn't be implemented, merely that it's one accessibility option that they already offer while nobody else does.
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