Template does not pass PAC's WCAG accessibility verification

[gabriel-woodbury]

In the experience of a couple physics graduate students, the graduate school is requiring dissertations to pass PAC's WCAG accessibility test, and as this template is implemented it is not doing so. PAC only works on pdf version 1.7 and below, while this is set to 2.0. I think this might be the main problem, which results in PAC finding issues with a lot of the math, and how it is handled regarding tagging and alt text. I am unsure if it actually is not being done correctly as implemented, or if PAC is unable to recognize it. I attach the sample dissertation that is generated and the associated PAC report.

Coffee_Consumption_Among_Graduate_Students_Writing_Dissertations_PAC_WCAG_Report.pdf
Coffee_Consumption_Among_Graduate_Students_Writing_Dissertations.pdf

[mphoward]

You can try pinning the PDF version in the \DocumentMetadata like this:

    pdfversion=1.7,
    pdfstandard=ua-1,

However, I am not sure if that will pass a PAC check. We used veraPDF when testing the template because I believe that is what is used by the LaTeX Tagging Project. PAC is also Windows-only so we don't have access to it on our systems.

[mphoward]

I was able to get in touch with the Graduate School, and they have indicated they will accept a good-faith effort for compliance with these requirements rather than passing a specific accessibility checker. If you would like to use this template, I suggest running veraPDF for both UA-2 and WCAG compliance (see #5) and enclosing the results with your formatting checking.

[mphoward]

Documentation added in #11.