Chirun
Christian Lawson-Perfect
Newcastle University
You use handwritten notes because
- It’s easy to write
- Diagrams are easy
- LaTeX is hard and time-consuming.
Students want notes in other formats because
- Low or no vision - need more contrast, bigger text, or read aloud.
- Can’t hold paper - need material displayed on a screen or read aloud.
- Dyslexia - need different colours, different font, structure.
- Poor memory or executive function - need more structure
- Reasons you haven’t thought of.
Handwritten notes are inaccessible to many people
- They can’t be scaled up usably.
- It’s hard to change colours.
- Text can’t be re-set to fit in a narrower window.
- AI makes mistakes (understatement!)
- There’s no structural metadata that readers can use to easily navigate.
- Your handwriting might be hard to read, like mine.
- Students from different backgrounds to yours might not be familiar with the handwriting style you use.
PDFs are a bit better
- Text is searchable (sometimes).
- Can be zoomed in (but not re-set, so lots of horizontal scrolling)
- The reader can’t change colours or fonts.
- No or little structural metadata for assistive tech.
PDF is fundamentally designed for print media.
Chirun
A tool to produce accessible course material from LaTeX or Markdown source.
Design
- Aim: least effort for lecturers
- Ideally self-service
- Best possible accessibility
- Package up entire courses, not just single documents.
Idea
- Input: LaTeX or Markdown source
- Add: structure information
- Output: HTML and PDF documents
Features
- Accessibility options
- Choice of formats
- Download a copy
- Vector images
- Jupyter notebooks
- Embed videos, Numbas exams, any other web content
- Slides in slideshow and document format
Problems still to solve
- LaTeX package support
- Beamer slides
- Annotation - unsolved!
Online builder
Upload your source material and build it online.
Thanks!
- Website
- chirun.org.uk
- msp.digital.learning@ncl.ac.uk
- Source code
- github.com/chirun-ncl
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