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Tooling for digital accessibility in mathematics: Quickly build compliant course websites that benefit all students

Matthew McMillan, Eli Boyden

Abstract

Public universities in the US must now meet digital accessibility (DA) standards under 2024 updates to Title II of the ADA. For math instructors, course materials must be screen-reader parsable, which standard LaTeX-to-PDF workflows cannot achieve. Despite MathML's availability as a web standard for accessible math, instructor adoption of DA-compliant workflows remains very low, creating a gap between available technology and classroom practice. This paper makes three contributions. First, we present a taxonomy of existing approaches to DA-compliant math content, organized by print (PDF) vs. web (HTML) output targets, analyzing tradeoffs for instructor adoption. Second, we describe a free workflow using Obsidian (Markdown-based content management), Quartz (static site generator), Git (collaboration and version control), and Cloudflare Pages (free hosting, private source files) that enables math instructors to create and publish DA-compliant course websites with MathML from TeX-based syntax. Setup takes approximately 1-2 hours; thereafter, site updates occur in minutes via a single command. A public setup tutorial is made available. Third, we present an empirical study of student outcomes across 31 sections of Calculus II over 6 semesters. Sections using the proposed system outperformed controls, with the treatment group reaching 2.4 standard deviations above the control mean in the final semester. Although all treatment sections were taught by one instructor, evidence such as acclimation trajectories of other new instructors suggests the system itself meaningfully contributes to performance gains. A student experience survey shows no statistically significant difference between groups, indicating no negative effect on experience. A proposed second study phase will assess barriers to adoption at other institutions.

Tooling for digital accessibility in mathematics: Quickly build compliant course websites that benefit all students

Abstract

Public universities in the US must now meet digital accessibility (DA) standards under 2024 updates to Title II of the ADA. For math instructors, course materials must be screen-reader parsable, which standard LaTeX-to-PDF workflows cannot achieve. Despite MathML's availability as a web standard for accessible math, instructor adoption of DA-compliant workflows remains very low, creating a gap between available technology and classroom practice. This paper makes three contributions. First, we present a taxonomy of existing approaches to DA-compliant math content, organized by print (PDF) vs. web (HTML) output targets, analyzing tradeoffs for instructor adoption. Second, we describe a free workflow using Obsidian (Markdown-based content management), Quartz (static site generator), Git (collaboration and version control), and Cloudflare Pages (free hosting, private source files) that enables math instructors to create and publish DA-compliant course websites with MathML from TeX-based syntax. Setup takes approximately 1-2 hours; thereafter, site updates occur in minutes via a single command. A public setup tutorial is made available. Third, we present an empirical study of student outcomes across 31 sections of Calculus II over 6 semesters. Sections using the proposed system outperformed controls, with the treatment group reaching 2.4 standard deviations above the control mean in the final semester. Although all treatment sections were taught by one instructor, evidence such as acclimation trajectories of other new instructors suggests the system itself meaningfully contributes to performance gains. A student experience survey shows no statistically significant difference between groups, indicating no negative effect on experience. A proposed second study phase will assess barriers to adoption at other institutions.

Paper Structure

This paper contains 21 sections, 1 equation, 7 figures, 1 table.

Table of Contents

  1. Abstract
  2. Introduction
  3. Related Work and Taxonomy of Solutions
  4. System Overview
  5. Student Impact: Evidence from Calculus II
  6. Future Work: Study of Adoption Barriers
  7. Acknowledgments

Figures (7)

  • Figure 1: System workflow. The instructor interacts only with Obsidian (left). A single "Commit and Sync" command triggers automatic building and deployment of the course website (right).
  • Figure 2: Course website: Calculus II home page with links to materials pages arranged by week. Markdown tables are easy to manage in Obsidian, with column widths controlled through embedded HTML.
  • Figure 3: Course website: Sample homework page showing expandable solution callouts. Solution files linked in the callouts on a given page can be made public or private by a simple command.
  • Figure 4: GPA by semester. Blue bars: control sections; red bars: treatment sections. Error bars represent $\sigma_\text{fall}$ or $\sigma_\text{spring}$, the population standard deviation of control section GPAs by season. These error bars indicate the typical spread of section GPAs around the seasonal control average.
  • Figure 5: A-band and DFW percentages by semester
  • ...and 2 more figures