Lets talk about the state and revolution

Get rid of PDF as the publication format. This is likely the only long-term solution. PDF is an objectively terrible format, designed for printing and not for reading, and most of the problems we have with making papers accessible are either due directly to it being a terrible format or are made worse because of it.

It treats the document markup and text as second-class citizens compared to visual layout, which implies that it will never be a great format for people with visual impairments or anyone who needs custom styling. Switching to another document format that preserves text order and allows the user to easily change font size and type would make this problem simple.

For historic reasons this is difficult, as our community is very familiar with distributing PDFs. Researchers have already spent decades making other document publishing formats accessible by default, most notably websites. Using HTML and CSS to format academic publications is a great way to solve the problem. PubCSS could be used to render the document in a way similar to the current proceedings template, if we want articles to still look like the printed page.

Another approach would be to use a document converter like Pandoc to produce a traditional PDF from a better markup language, e.g., using HTML and CSS or plain text. Using a document format that screen readers can access implies that it is easily machine-readable, which also benefits archival and analysis of our field. This is something the community seems to be interested in, as CHI recently changed the reference format partially to make it easier for machines to recognize papers and authors. [...]

It is sometimes suggested that an accessible version of the paper be supplied along with the PDF. In practice, this does not work because it is likely that the PDF will be shared, but not the supplementary information.

An Uninteresting Tour Through Why Our Research Papers Aren't Accessible

So, just out of curiosity a few years back I clicked on a headline for like an annual day of remembrance for tiannemen square, and it included a video so I wanted to see if they would play the full clip.

That clip stopped at the same point that the clip is always stopped when used in news stories, but the article linked a source about tiannemen square for further reading.

I clicked on that source, and it was very similar to the first article, roughly 2-3 short paragraphs of declarative statements, the same clip edited to cut off before it shows "tank man" climbing on top of the tank shortly before walking away unharmed, and another link to a source for further reading about the events at tiannemen square.

At that point I wanted to see if I would ever get through this chain of an attribution of an attribution down to any primary sources or even a single article that just showed the full, unedited clip at the very least.

Every link I clicked on had the same exact structure. It was an article from a major publication, they all featured either the singular famous still frame of Tank Man standing in front of the tank or they showed the edited clip that is cut before the clip shows him walking away safe and unharmed in order to imply that the tank ran him over, they all had a short summary of events and then the "source" provided if a reader wanted to verify the facts of the article was just another article repeating the same thing which linked to another article repeating the same thing which linked to... and so on and so on.

I probably went a few dozen links deep and never found a single article that used any primary source documents or historical analysis or investigative reports as a source for any of the claims made in the article. The only primary source to be found was the singular video that every article refused to show in full.

And to be clear, this isn't just some odd quirk of this specific event. This pattern is exactly how most modern propaganda makes its way into the public consciousness. When a claim or accusation is made and the source making the claim is of dubious veracity (such as when the US state department, intelligence agencies, and various affiliated NGOs make claims about states or groups that are targets of US aggression and intervention), then going through this process of publishing hundreds of articles that amount to little more substance than saying "BBC reported that NYT reported that The Sun reported that WaPo reported that The Guardian reported that an anonymous state department official said something happened" serves two purposes.

The first purpose that this process serves is that the original source that is of dubious or sometimes completely discredited veracity is now buried from scrutiny under and attribution of an attribution of an attribution of an attribution.

The second purpose this process serves is that it creates the appearance of academic, journalistic, and/or scholarly consensus even though this large volume of reporting ultimately traces back to a singular source.

Ao3 as the quiet, unassuming book nerd that's secretly freaky as fuck

*string music swells*

"visit other worlds..."

By Lev Koufax

"YES I'm doing racism and appropriation

NO I don't care