Accessible Ebooks from InDesign
Creating ebooks from InDesign is not exactly an intuitive process. But I have some good news: I have created a course that will help. It is free and open on YouTube, and supported with text posts on the Accessible Publishing Learning Network. I’ve tried to makes this accessible: the videos are captioned and there are text and screenshot articles with every video on the sister site at APLN. The downloadables are also on APLN.
I have been making ebooks with InDesign for many years. I am going to guide you through creating an ebook using what is the most common starting point for ebooks — that is, the print layout file. InDesign is a terrific print layout tool but in order to get really good ebooks out of it, you need to understand how to work the gears. And even then, you will need to do some cleanup of the HTML and CSS that InDesign creates.
Announcing a video series of 32 micro-lessons organized in four modules about making accessible ebooks from InDesign
I will walk you through that whole process from beginning to end. I will be demonstrating my own workflows that I use with a wide variety of publisher files and content types. This workflow is idiosyncratic in that it includes hacks that I’ve developed over more than a decade of nudging InDesign politely and then not-so-politely.
The course is a series of 32 micro-lessons organized in four modules. Users can dip in and out focussing on the things they want to learn. Or take the course from beginning to end.
Please do let me know what you think. What’s missing? What’s confusing? Comment here or on YouTube.
Big thanks to Leah Brochu at NNELS, and Paula Bruce and Sahiba Shah at eBound Canada for their support and enthusiasm.
