The PreTeXt platform for Sound Writing, developed by Puget Sound mathematics professor Rob Beezer, builds on the nearly four decades of work across the disciplines to attend to a wide range of accessibility issues. Sound Writing is accessible to users where they are, adapting seamlessly to the medium or device in which they can best access it; the online version scales to phones, laptops, and tablets and is printable in PDF format. Students can navigate it through the Table of Contents, through internal hyperlinks (which translate to page numbers in the PDF version), or through a native or internet Google search.
The PreTeXt platform offers innovative accessibility features. The online version is designed to be compatible with screen reader tools and programs, for people who prefer or need those features. It is also easily exported into BRF (electronic Braille) format for embossing in Braille.
Sound Writing is freely available on the Web and thus is a text that students can readily afford to use in their first-year seminars, throughout college, and beyond. Moreover, as a born-digital text authored by students who are themselves digital natives, Sound Writing incorporates elements of students’ multimodal daily life in such gestures as the social media reference in Section 2.1 “Finding, Skimming, and Reading Sources” or the cat meme homages throughout the book.
A July 2020 presentation discusses accessibility features of relevance to campuses considering adopting Sound Writing.