The webinar \u201cAccessible Mathematical Content in PDF\u201d, organized by the PDF Association on June 16th, was a great success from the feedback we received.<\/p>\n\n
The four panelists David Carlisle (LaTeX Project & editor of MathML at W3C), Boris Doubrov (Dual Lab & chair LaTeX Project Liasion Working Group), Frank Mittelbach (LaTeX Project lead), Neil Soiffer (creator of MathCAT & co-chair of the Math Working Group at W3C), and moderator Duff Johnson (CEO PDF Association) discussed the current state and demonstrated that there is now a reliable workflow to produce accessible documents with mathematical content and use them in viewers and browsers with AT support.<\/p>\n\n
The webinar was divided into a presentation\/demonstration part and a lengthy Q\/A session and was attended by more than 230 people. More than 100 of them filled out the survey afterwards and offered comments and\/or posed additional questions. We plan to answer those as well and post the questions and answers next to webinar recording in the near future.<\/p>\n\n
If you haven\u2019t been able to attend but would like to watch the recording and obtain the presentation material, check out the link to the webinar page.<\/p>\n\n
Enjoy \u2014 Frank<\/p>\n\n","pubDate":"Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000","link":"https:\/\/latex-project.org\/\/news\/2026\/06\/19\/PDFA-webinar\/","guid":"https:\/\/latex-project.org\/\/news\/2026\/06\/19\/PDFA-webinar\/","category":["best practice guide","accessibility","accessible math","tagged PDF","PDFA","PDF\/UA-2","LaTeX","news"]},{"title":"LaTeX 2026-06-01 released and distributed","description":"
We sent the 2026-06-01 release of the LaTeX kernel to CTAN at the weekend, and\nits already available in TeX Live (MiKTeX should follow soon).<\/p>\n\n
Progress in embedding tagging code as part of a more general overhaul continues.\nThe implementation of block structures, such as theorems, and headings\n(sections), has been updated. We are well on the way to providing a flexible\ninterface that many document authors will be able to use without needing\nadditional code or packages.<\/p>\n\n
This work is also an opportunity to look back at (long-standing) LaTeX code and\nto see where there are issues. As well as refining some spacing, we have\naddressed a long-standing technical wrinkle: (mis)using math mode simply to\nalign material vertically. This \u2018fake math\u2019 is a serious tagging issue but also\nshows up where the user wants, for example, to apply a color change to all\nmathematics. With this release, the use of math mode is essentially restricted\nto \u2018true math\u2019.<\/p>\n\n
Work on better supporting languages has been ongoing, with new Working on templates has prompted us to further revise some concepts that have\nbeen added to the kernel in recent years, to align the code more closely with\nthe most natural pathways for users.<\/p>\n\n Work of course is not restricted to tagging. There are further improvements to\ncopy-paste of symbols, several bug fixes for corner cases in The newsletter<\/a>\nalso covers various other small enhancements or corrections that we provide\nwith the June release.<\/p>\n\n Enjoy \u2013 Joseph<\/p>\n","pubDate":"Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000","link":"https:\/\/latex-project.org\/\/news\/2026\/06\/01\/issue43-of-latex2e-released\/","guid":"https:\/\/latex-project.org\/\/news\/2026\/06\/01\/issue43-of-latex2e-released\/","category":["latex2e","news"]},{"title":"Time for testing: the final pre-release for 2026-06 is available","description":" The second and final pre-release version for the 2026-06-01 LaTeX kernel went to\nCTAN few days ago. We encourage everybody to try it out on their documents (and\ndevelopers on their packages) so that there will be no unwanted surprises when\nthe June release hits the streets. Just run your documents with Further improvements have been made to the We have done more work on revising document command concepts in this\npre-release, with the handling of empty key\u2013value lists by\n The code for block templates has been further refined to allow more fine-grained\ncustomization, and better emulation of the To assist with copy-paste of text from PDFs, we have further improved\nsupport for Unicode mappings for the standard math mode fonts.<\/p>\n\n A number of subtle spacing bugs in After a bit of consideration, we have renamed the collected documentation for\n\u2018newer\u2019 commands to As always, for full details of all of the changes planned for 2026-06-01, see\nthe draft LaTeX News 43<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n Enjoy \u2014 Joseph<\/p>\n","pubDate":"Sun, 10 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000","link":"https:\/\/latex-project.org\/\/news\/2026\/05\/10\/latex-dev-2\/","guid":"https:\/\/latex-project.org\/\/news\/2026\/05\/10\/latex-dev-2\/","category":["latex2e","beta-testing","development formats","news"]},{"title":"New Best Practice Guide for Mathematical Content in PDF","description":" The PDF Association has released the first edition of the Best Practice Guide: Math in PDF<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n This guide, developed by the LaTeX Project Liaison Working Group (A collaboration between the LaTeX Project and the PDF Association) provides critical recommendations for authors and publishers to ensure complex mathematical and STEM content meets accessibility requirements and assistive technology users\u2019 needs.<\/p>\n\n Comments and more general discussion of Tagging of STEM documents may be sent to the PDF Association at info@pdfa.org or as discussions at the LaTeX project tagging site<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n Enjoy \u2014 Frank<\/p>\n\n","pubDate":"Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000","link":"https:\/\/latex-project.org\/\/news\/2026\/04\/23\/PDFA-BPG-math\/","guid":"https:\/\/latex-project.org\/\/news\/2026\/04\/23\/PDFA-BPG-math\/","category":["best practice guide","accessibility","tagged PDF","PDFA","PDF\/UA-2","news"]},{"title":"PDF Association\u2019s press release: Accessible math in PDF \u2013 finally!","description":" We are pleased to announce that the PDF Association (PDFA) has just issued a press release highlighting the LaTeX Team\u2019s work to make accessible math in PDF a reality. With the latest developments based on PDF 2.0 and PDF\/UA\u20112, LaTeX can now automatically generate PDFs with STEM content, such as mathematics, that are truly accessible and compliant with the PDF\/UA\u20112 ISO standard. This change closes a major accessibility gap for STEM documents and opens the door to recompiling large archives of existing LaTeX\u2011based PDFs in an accessible form.<\/p>\n\n If you followed our work in the Tagging Project<\/a> then this isn\u2019t really news for you, but it\u2019s especially gratifying to see our work appreciated and recognized by the broader community, and it is encouraging that the industry is embracing these standards more and more.<\/p>\n\n In particular, Firefox is now capable (with release 148) to correctly interpret PDFs that are tagged and contain MathML to describe mathematical formulas, and we have high hopes that Chrome will follow soon.<\/p>\n\n Learn more this in the PDF Association\u2019s press release.<\/a><\/p>\n\n Enjoy \u2014 Frank<\/p>\n\n","pubDate":"Thu, 05 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000","link":"https:\/\/latex-project.org\/\/news\/2026\/03\/05\/PDFA-press\/","guid":"https:\/\/latex-project.org\/\/news\/2026\/03\/05\/PDFA-press\/","category":["latex2e","accessibility","tagged PDF","press release","PDFA","PDF\/UA-2","news"]},{"title":"Pre-release 1 of LaTeX 2026-06-01 is available for testing","description":" The first pre-release version for the 2026-06-01 LaTeX kernel went to CTAN few\ndays ago: it\u2019s now in TeX Live, and we hope people will test it out.<\/p>\n\n Work continues on bringing more flexible and predictable design support to\ndifferent areas of the kernel: this is needed for tagged PDF output but also\nhelps more generally in making it easier to customize LaTeX.<\/p>\n\n Most notably, block environments (such as lists, quotes and proofs), and\nsectioning commands ( We are now emulating all keys of the Supporting work on the lower-level template and document command architecture\ncontinues, with a modification to the To help users find the various newer features, we have made a start on a single\ndocumentation file, currently called and over time we expect to add more information, first for newer features and\nthen more generally.<\/p>\n\n For full details of all of the changes planned for 2026-06-01, see the draft LaTeX News 43<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n Enjoy \u2014 Joseph<\/p>\n\n","pubDate":"Tue, 27 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000","link":"https:\/\/latex-project.org\/\/news\/2026\/01\/27\/latex-dev-1\/","guid":"https:\/\/latex-project.org\/\/news\/2026\/01\/27\/latex-dev-1\/","category":["latex2e","beta-testing","development formats","news"]},{"title":"LaTeX 2025-11-01 released and distributed","description":" We sent the 2025-11-01 release of the LaTeX kernel to CTAN last weekend. By\nnow, it\u2019s available to users in TeX Live and MiKTeX.<\/p>\n\n The tagging project remains the major focus of the team, and in this release\nwe have extended what happens when you give the command We have worked across the tagging codebase, extending tagging sockets,\nnormalizing key names and starting on support for contexts (for example\nlinked to font size).<\/p>\n\n For better math tagging, we now support intent attributes: these allow for\nexample The newsletter<\/a>\nalso covers various other small enhancements or corrections that we provide\nwith the November release.<\/p>\n\n Enjoy \u2013 Joseph<\/p>\n","pubDate":"Tue, 11 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000","link":"https:\/\/latex-project.org\/\/news\/2025\/11\/11\/issue42-of-latex2e-released\/","guid":"https:\/\/latex-project.org\/\/news\/2025\/11\/11\/issue42-of-latex2e-released\/","category":["latex2e","news"]},{"title":"Accessibility of STEM documents - talk at PDF days 2025 in Berlin","description":" In September, Ulrike, Joseph, and I attended PDF Days in Berlin to present our work on making complex STEM documents truly accessible. The core message: PDF\/UA-1 simply isn\u2019t designed for mathematics, so marking documents as \u201ccompliant\u201d doesn\u2019t mean they\u2019re actually usable by people with disabilities. PDF\/UA-2, on the other hand, handles math properly through MathML support\u2014it\u2019s the standard that actually works for STEM.<\/p>\n\n The challenge is industry support. PDF\/UA-2 is relatively new, so tools and workflows are still catching up. But there\u2019s progress: several hundred LaTeX packages are now compatible with accessible output generation and an end-to-end workflow exist, meaning researchers and technical writers can start to produce accessible documents with minimal extra configuration. And doing so will hopefully push industry adoption further along.<\/p>\n\n The talks are now online<\/a>. Beyond my presentation, there are several worth checking out if accessibility in PDF matters to your work.<\/p>\n\n One note on the recording: you\u2019ll notice I restart the audio output in my examples several times, insisting it wasn\u2019t working. The irony is that the speech recorded perfectly\u2014it was the conference room microphone that failed in real-time. Lesson learned: even at accessibility-focused events, the technology doesn\u2019t always cooperate.<\/p>\n\n We also presented a poster on the topic, which is now also available online<\/a> together with a few others.<\/p>\n\n Enjoy \u2014 Frank<\/p>\n\n","pubDate":"Thu, 30 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000","link":"https:\/\/latex-project.org\/\/news\/2025\/10\/30\/pdfadays\/","guid":"https:\/\/latex-project.org\/\/news\/2025\/10\/30\/pdfadays\/","category":["accessibility","tagged PDF","PDFA","news"]},{"title":"Pre-release 3 of LaTeX 2025-11-01 is available for testing","description":" The final pre-release version for the 2025-11-01 LaTeX kernel went to CTAN few\ndays ago: it\u2019s now in TeX Live, and we hope people will test it out.<\/p>\n\n As with previous recent releases, the major focus here is tagging: we are\nimproving the code in various places, and moving from \u2018development\u2019 to\n\u2018production ready\u2019 status for tagging - at least if you are using a supported\nsubset of packages.<\/p>\n\n Beyond tagging, we\u2019ve taken the opportunity to address some long-standing\noddities in the kernel. In particular, language<\/code> and\nother-languages<\/code> keys for \\DocumentMetadata<\/code>; these support standard BCP-47\nstrings such as en-GB<\/code>.<\/p>\n\nOther improvements and changes<\/h2>\n\n
amsmath<\/code>, and more\nlanguage support for varioref<\/code>. At the lower level, work on the L3 programming\nlayer continues; notably here, we have made adjustments to better support the up\nengine in creating programmatic strings.<\/p>\n\nTime for testing: the final pre-release for 2026-06 is available<\/h1>\n\n
pdflatex-dev<\/code>\nor lualatex-dev<\/code> or use l3build check --dev<\/code> if you are a developer who uses\nl3build<\/code> for your packages.<\/p>\n\n\\DocumentMetadata<\/code> command, with new\nkeys for language support (language<\/code> and other-languages<\/code>) which read standard\nBCP-47 strings.<\/p>\n\n\\NewDocumentCommand<\/code> adjusted to work more smoothly with a move from classical\npositional arguments.<\/p>\n\nenumitem<\/code> package. There are also\nimprovements to debugging support for templates.<\/p>\n\namsmath<\/code> have been addressed in this\npre-release: testing is strongly encouraged in this area.<\/p>\n\ncmdguide<\/code> (from latex-cmds<\/code>): this fits better with the\nlong-standing set of \u2018guide\u2019 files.<\/p>\n\nNew Best Practice Guide for Mathematical Content in PDF<\/h1>\n\n
PDF Association\u2019s press release: Accessible math in PDF \u2013 finally!<\/h1>\n\n
Pre-release 1 of LaTeX 2026-06-01 is available for testing<\/h1>\n\n
\\chapter<\/code>, \\section<\/code> and so forth) have been\nre-implemented using the template system. This means that the code is entirely\nnew if you use \\DocumentMetadata<\/code>. This is an area that we\u2019d particularly\nencourage interested users to test, particularly with varied package loading.\nFor the more adventurous, please try out modifying the instances (or even\nproviding additional templates)!<\/p>\n\nenumitem<\/code> package and\n\\usepackage{enumitem}<\/code> will simply be ignored when \\DocumentMetadata<\/code>is\nloaded. As this is not yet a full emulation we are very much interested in\nfeedback on things that do not work yet or work differently. Thus, please report\nissues at the tagging project\nrepository<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n-NoValue-<\/code> concept and support for\nrecovering instance values.<\/p>\n\nlatex-cmds<\/code> (very much a working title).\nThis already contains the documentation for<\/p>\n\n\n
LaTeX 2025-11-01 release distributed<\/h1>\n\n
News from the tagging project<\/h2>\n\n
\\DocumentMetadata<\/code>.\nThis now always<\/em> loads the new code we are working on in latex-lab<\/code>. Tagging\nremains opt-in, still needing<\/p>\n\\DocumentMetadata<\/span>{<\/span>lang = ..., tagging = on}<\/span>\n<\/code><\/pre><\/div><\/div>\n\n|x|<\/code> to be read as more than \u2018bar x bar\u2019. Also notable for math\nmode is that we have fixed an issue with tabular cells: these now get the\ncorrect MathML representation.<\/p>\n\nOther improvements and changes<\/h2>\n\n
Accessibility for STEM documents - talk at PDF days 2025 in Berlin<\/h1>\n\n
Pre-release 3 of LaTeX 2025-11-01 is available for testing<\/h1>\n\n
\\newcommand<\/code> now avoids making \\long<\/code>\nmacros if there are no arguments to be collected. This one needs developers to\ntest it: please try out your files using latex-dev<\/code>! There are as always a\ncollection of bug-fixes too: it is not impossible that these corrections affect\npackage code.<\/p>\n\n