The problem here is specific to LaTeX. I wrote my PhD dissertation using OpenOffice.org (now use LibreOffice), and generating HTML was easy (I posted the HTML).

The problem here is specific to LaTeX. I wrote my PhD dissertation using OpenOffice.org (now use LibreOffice), and generating HTML was easy (I posted the HTML). But the author is right, LaTeX is widely used, translating it to HTML is hard, and there are no incentives to make or improve tools. Even if you don't want HTML, it'd be good for the LaTeX tools to automaticalky generate reflowable PDF for accessibility. There should be a process for funding infrastructure to accelerate science, and this would be a good example. There's an interesting trick you could try. PDF supports embedding other contents. LibreOffice, for example, can slip its original edited file into a generated PDF, producing perfectly editable PDF. Maybe a variant of this idea could be used, e.g., store the LaTeX source of HTML in the PDF, so people can "get the PDF" yet still have options. But that's just a side idea, the real issue is funding infrastructure for science.