University Libraries at Virginia Tech’s Open Education Initiative
2026 Library Publishing Showcase Week: Innovating and Adapting
Transforming LaTeX to Accessible and Inclusive Formats: A Guide for Open Educational Resources
Published by Open Education Initiative of the Scholarly Communication Department at the University Libraries
Many STEM authors like to write in LaTeX but making those publications accessible for blind and low-vision readers is challenging for small publishers and for those without a lot of technical support. This is especially the case for OER publishers. After several years of exploration, the Open Education Initiative has documented a process for conversion of LaTeX into html and EPUB. It was published on October 27th in an open access article. This fills a significant need and we are excited to finally be able to share this!
Impact:
This article is a significant and practical contribution to literature and OER publishing as practiced by hundreds of small practitioners and individual scholars who may be struggling to make long-form LaTeX-authored work more accessible for readers who use screen readers — without re-keying it.
Why library publishing:
The OEI is a service unit within the Libraries’ Scholarly Communication department. The work the OEI does in OER development within a university brings us in touch with subject matter experts from a variety of disciplines. These experts talk with us about their goals and challenges in teaching and learning not exclusively, but mainly as they relate to course materials. Being situated within a learning organization allows us to more closely collaborate, learn together, adopt flexible workflows, to run pilots, and to try out new methods, formats, and processes. It also allows us to spot trends and issues across many disciplines — including assessing needs for better solutions for accessibility of LaTeX created long-form documents using existing and reusable source files.