Introduction

This work was carried out as part of a HESTEM Mathematics Curriculum Innovation project. We have explored methods to produce flexible and accessible learning resources for mathematics with a focus on producing a guide for lecturers in HEI to enable them as individuals to create flexible resources efficiently and robustly.

A significant barrier for disabled students who enrol on HE programmes of study involving any mathematical or statistical content is the suitability of the resource format for their particular situation. To date, there is no single facility to produce resources in a flexible format which can be modified according to individual requirements. We hope to provide teaching staff with the requisite knowledge to access and make use of a small selection of currently available software to produce a variety of accessible formats automatically from a single master document. This will enable lecturers and departments to

Design inclusive curriculum delivery;
anticipate potential barriers and resolve these in a proactive manner;
communicate realistic expectations to prospective entrants and support staff;
avoid the use of inflexible learning resources which cannot be tailored to particular needs and
avoid making costly reactive adjustments for individual students which often result in additional versions of documents which cannot be reused and which are not updated.

As part of this project we have worked with a number of legacy documents and tested a subset of L^aT_eX packages that survey respondents noted were important to them in writing teaching materials. Transformations from L^aT_eX to other formats are fragile and will remain so — the introduction of notations and structures from any of the 4000+ T_eX, L^aT_eX and related packages and tools available ¹ is not a luxury that can be readily supported. We have focused therefore on documenting a basic structure and symbol collection which can be transformed successfully. It is acknowledged that for use beyond the production of teaching materials this is unlikely to be of assistance. This site is not aimed at the accessible production of published materials such as books or papers. In fact, it is recommended that L^aT_eX is not used as the source format in these cases but rather a true mark-up language, which can be robustly styled into multiple formats, should be used. The methods described are aimed at teaching staff who do not have the resources of a publishing house at their disposal.