Accessible FXL Ebooks

Accessible fixed-layout ebooks? Is that even possible, or is it a contradiction in terms? There are groups around the publishing and standards industry working on this question. Because the font can’t be changed, and the type size can’t be increased, fixed-layouts are often thought of as the opposite of accessible.

I have been playing with ways to approach children’s picture books a little differently. Working with an indie author, Bruce Simpson, who was game to be experimental, we made an ebook with read-aloud narration that includes the image descriptions. This video is a snippet of the resulting ebook.

The idea here is that the image descriptions are exposed to all readers, that they are rolled into the reading experience in an inclusive way. I worked with Keith Snyder of Typeflow, who has written a bespoke tool to sync audio with the text in children’s picture books, to create this ebook edition of Paislee and the Talking Tree.

Alt text fades up unobtrusively when the read-aloud is almost done, and read-aloud highlighting of that text continues seamlessly. That way, every page still looks just like the print book, without any additional text or buttons on top of it, and if a child doesn’t want to hear the alt text (or even see it), they can simply click to the next page. But a child who does want to hear it – whether because they’re visually impaired or they just like having pages described, as an adult might do when reading to them – doesn’t have to do anything. They can just sit and enjoy being read to.

This ebook is available on Kobo.com for a reasonable fee. Check it out and let me know what you think.