LaTeX Math Accessibility Checker

Free · Online · MathML readiness for WCAG 2.1 AA / PDF/UA-2 · No signup

Will your equations read in a screen reader? Upload a LaTeX file or project and get a free, honest math accessibility score: whether your math is exposed as MathML, which strategy your setup uses, and exactly how to make equations accessible for WCAG 2.1 AA and PDF/UA-2. We are clear about what only a human screen-reader test can confirm.

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Best for: .tex, .cls, .sty, or a project .zip. A compiled .pdf works here too.

What this math accessibility checker looks at

Math accessibility strategy Whether your document exposes equations as MathML, relies on a legacy approach like axessibility, or has no strategy at all, in which case the math is effectively unreadable to a screen reader.
Critical
MathML / PDF/UA-2 setup Whether your engine and configuration can actually produce navigable math: LuaLaTeX with \DocumentMetadata{pdfstandard=ua-2, tagging-setup={math/setup=mathml-SE}} on a recent TeX Live.
Setup
Tagging enabled Whether tagging is turned on at all. Accessible math rides on a tagged PDF, so if tagging is off, the equations cannot be exposed to assistive technology.
Required
Package compatibility Whether the packages your project loads are known to break tagging, since anything that breaks tagging also breaks math tagging.
Cited data
Runs on your LaTeX source (.tex/.cls/.sty/.zip) or a compiled .pdf. Your file is analysed and discarded immediately; only the report is kept, briefly.

The rules it maps to

WCAG 2.1 AA (1.1.1) Non-text content, including an equation rendered as an image, needs a text alternative. For math that means MathML or a meaningful text description.
The standard
PDF/UA-2 The current PDF accessibility standard that carries MathML math. LuaLaTeX can produce PDF/UA-2 with navigable equations today when configured for it.
Tagged PDF
Screen-reader support NVDA with MathCAT and JAWS read MathML aloud and let a reader navigate an equation term by term, which a flat image can never allow.
AT support
This tool checks how your math is exposed. It does not determine your legal obligations.

What still needs a human

Alt-text quality When an equation is a picture with alt text, only a person can judge whether the description is actually usable and correct.
Human
Screen-reader test How an equation actually sounds, and whether it navigates sensibly, can only be confirmed by testing with a real screen reader.
Human
Math is the hardest part of STEM accessibility. The report flags what software can verify and is honest about what it cannot.

How to make math equations accessible in LaTeX

Math accessibility has one core problem: most published equations are pictures. Here is what that means for a screen reader user, and the fix.

What a screen reader does with a typical equation

In most PDFs an equation is just drawn glyphs with no structure behind them. A screen reader meets it and says nothing, or says "graphic", and the student loses the one part of the page the whole chapter depends on. This is not an edge case: it is the default outcome of compiling LaTeX the traditional way, and no amount of careful writing around the equation fixes it.

What changes with MathML

When the same equation is embedded as MathML, a screen reader can speak it correctly and, crucially, let the reader walk through it: into the numerator, across the exponent, back out, term by term, the way a sighted reader scans a formula. NVDA (with MathCAT) and JAWS both do this today. That difference, spoken and navigable versus silent, is the entire subject of math accessibility.

The LaTeX recipe for accessible math

Current LaTeX can emit MathML for every equation automatically. Put \DocumentMetadata{lang=en-US, pdfversion=2.0, pdfstandard=ua-2, tagging=on, tagging-setup={math/setup=mathml-SE}} before \documentclass and compile with LuaLaTeX on TeX Live 2025 or newer. Your equations stay ordinary LaTeX; the MathML is generated at compile time. This checker verifies exactly this setup, and tells you if a package in your preamble will break it.

If you cannot move to MathML yet

Some workflows are pinned to older TeX distributions or pdfLaTeX. The honest interim options: attach the LaTeX source of each formula with axessibility (a stopgap: screen readers read the raw LaTeX aloud, which experienced users can parse but beginners cannot), or provide the math in an accessible companion format such as HTML with MathJax. Treat both as bridges. The destination is MathML in the PDF itself, and it is reachable today.

Get Your LaTeX Math Equations to Be Screen-Reader Accessible by MathML

We tag every equation with proper MathML output and alt text, fixing nested fractions, summations, and integrals so screen readers like JAWS and NVDA read your math correctly.

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