Let’s talk about accessible publishing. Between the European Accessibility Act and the ADA Title II business, it feels like we’ve been talking a lot about accessibility in book publishing in the past few years. Haven’t we? What I see as one of the main issues around accessible book publishing at the moment is the wealth of resources. There are too many! How does one pick through them all?
I will tell you about the trusted resources in this sliver of the publishing world, showing you how to sift through them, to find the thing you need for the specific problem that is harrying you on any given day. I am going to try to emphasize plain language resources wherever possible as I well understand the learning curve that comes from complicated, overly technical writing.
I am also going to order this by workflow starting with resources for editorial, then typesetting and design, before digging into topics like image descriptions, metadata, legislation, certification, and artificial intelligence. It may not all be relevant to your work but there should be something for everyone.
Editorial, Manuscript Prep, and Word
I bet you are used to these kinds of conversations starting in the production department. I want to back up conversations about accessibility to say that this work categorically starts in the editorial department. The more folks are involved and invested in accessible outcomes throughout the publishing workflow, the more likely we are to end up with well-rounded content.
There is quite a bit that editorial staff can do to contribute to accessible outcomes. An understanding of and focus on structure and navigation is a clear one that both of these resources emphasize. This APLN article, Incorporating Accessibility into the Editorial Process is a good starting point. And Taylor and Francis, whose reputation for accessibility is borne out with an Accessible Books Consortium award for excellence in accessible publishing, has some very good guidelines for creating a clean, well-structured manuscript in their guide, How to Make Your Research Accessible. Many authors, for example, use word processing software to design and typeset their content and this is always a mistake and best left to the professionals.
The more folks are involved and invested in accessible outcomes throughout the publishing workflow, the more likely we are to end up with well-rounded content.
Microsoft Word is the software of choice for so many of us in book publishing. And 90% of us aren’t exploiting it adequately for its built-in accessibility features. The DAISY Consortium has a video webinar, Word Document Accessibility 101, that goes through in detail how to best to use Word to support that work. This is a really useful video for people new to using Word. And for veterans as well.
And take note: Word has a very good built-in accessibility checker. Use it! It is really helpful. Bear in mind that automated checkers are just one tool and most definitely not foolproof but it is 100% better than not checking at all.
The DAISY Consortium has a very useful tool to convert to accessible EPUB directly from Word, WordToEPUB. Try it!
Finally, the already lauded DAISY Consortium has a very useful tool to convert to accessible EPUB directly from Word, WordToEPUB. Try it! It’s awesome and, honestly, not talked about nearly enough. They also have a webinar explaining how to use it: WordToEPUB Extended Tutorial. Some caveats: it only works on PC/Windows computers. And it works well but that assumes a well-made Word file. It can’t turn garbage into gold but it can create a tidy EPUB from a well-structured file at the touch of a button.
Typesetting & Design
A quick couple of resources: the Registered Graphic Designers organization in Toronto has a useful publication about print accessibility. (Sidebar: the market is ripe for an update to this document.) And there is an annual virtual conference focussed on design and accessibility, the Design + Accessibility Summit. There is a lot at this event about accessibility basics, PDF, image descriptions, and more. Virtual means that you can stop and rewind and really get all the details that you need. Check it out — it might be right for you or your staff.
The elephant in almost any room I’m in is InDesign. InDesign is such a dominant product in layout work that a small expert group, assembled by the Accessible Books Consortium, has engaged the InDesign engineers over the past 4.5 years to improve how EPUBs are exported from that software. And substantial improvements have been made. There is still work to be done but it is massively improved over a few years ago. Hooray! The links here are to a news update on the changes, a webinar detailing the most recent ones, and a training series on the APLN website. It is a slightly out-of-date series of micro-lessons on how to work the InDesign gears to make good, accessible ebooks.
There are an abundance of resources around developing alt text but, again, knowing which sites to trust is can feel like a crapshoot.
Image Descriptions
There are an abundance of resources around developing alt text but, again, knowing which sites to trust is can feel like a crapshoot.
The first resource I want to point you to is the Poet Training Tool. Developed by The DIAGRAM Center (Digital Image And Graphic Resources for Accessible Materials), a Benetech Global Literacy initiative. The Poet Training Tool is a web-based image description resource that helps people learn when and how to describe various types of images frequently found in all kinds of books. Users of this tool have access to best practice guidelines and hands-on exercises that help cultivate skills for writing effective image descriptions for critical visual content.
The current version of this web-based resource is broken up into three key sections. The first section guides users through the process of determining when a description is needed. The second section provides general and specific guidelines on how to produce an effective description, along with examples produced by accessibility experts. The last section allows users to upload content and practice writing descriptions using their own images.
The third link on screen is to WebAIM’s guidelines on alt text. This is an excellent plain-language introduction to the nuts and bolts of image descriptions with useful examples, and good breakdowns of the various choices one might make when writing an image description. It also includes some basics on how to code image descriptions.
When it comes to resources in other languages, I have two links to resources available in both French and English, which may be useful for some of you. The first is a guide to writing image descriptions — and this is a good plain language resource. The second is the Literary Image Descriptions best practice guide written by a researcher who creates content for print disabled people and which goes deep on how to describe image-heavy books. It’s a terrific guide that is long and very detailed and may be the exact thing you or your team needs.
The CooperHewitt museum guidelines are another wonderful resource for museum-quality imagery and how to level up your alt text game.
Finally, the specifications folks have been busy the last little while focusing on how best to code long or extended descriptions, a practice that is especially relevant to STEM and other kinds of complex content. After a great deal of testing and R&D, they recommend the approach that is essentially the simplest from a markup perspective: linking out to an HTML file with the extended description in it. More details and coded examples are available at that link.
Metadata
Accessibility metadata is more critical to the supply chain than ever before. If you aren’t writing a11y metadata, you really should be. It is being exposed to consumers more and more in the supply chain — even on Amazon — making the writing and distribution of good accessibility metadata a competitive advantage. That said, my job here today isn’t to convince you to do it but to point you to resources that might be helpful as you figure it out.
Benetech is the driving force behind the Diagram Center. They have a brief explainer on accessibility data points. The second link is deeper. Published by the excellent APACE (Accelerating Publishing Accessibility through Collaboration in Europe) project from the EU late last year, this resource is very helpfully available in many languages — English, Bulgarian, Dutch, Finnish, Italian, and French. It is technical but lays out the argument for a11y metadata very plainly, and guides readers through the process of implementing the various flavours of data: the schema data that lives in an EPUB, ONIX, Marc, and guidelines for switching back and forth between the standards.
A resource that might come in handy for publishers who outsource ebook development is this DAISY Accessibility Metadata Viewer. This is a useful tool that transforms an ebooks metadata into something more human readable. This is a valuable tool for metadata administrators looking to choose ONIX values for a digital publication.
These next two resources are more technical. The Publishing at W3C community group, part of the group that oversees the EPUB specification, published an Accessibility Metadata Display Guide late last year after a great deal of work thinking through the details. This document is clear and technical, high-level guidance to rendering the various flavours of metadata for the consumer, covering both format metadata (EPUB and PDF), and ONIX and MARC records.
Finally, as a developer, my focus has always been the schema metadata that goes into an EPUB, but the last link is very clear, very deep guidance to how to use ONIX metadata to describe various accessibility metrics in a publication. Most of you here will be familiar with ONIX, I should think — it is the primary kind of metadata that goes into the supply chain. If it’s on a product page, it came from the ONIX feed. Editeur is the international taxonomy standards body that oversees the ONIX standard and provides guidance on its use. Their advice on ONIX is indispensable.
A lot of conversation around all of these bits and pieces of the accessible publishing puzzle all lead back to one place. Not Rome, but the DAISY Knowledge Base. It is often my first and last stop when I am trying to figure out a gnarly question. I use it every day. It is useful for EPUB, yes, but also for HTML, accessibility best practices, and general guidance. It is my favourite resource, bar none. Bookmark it and go forth and make accessible content.
All of these bits and pieces of the accessible publishing puzzle all lead back to one place. Not Rome, but the DAISY Knowledge Base.
QA and Testing
Okay, let’s shift gears a little to talk about QA and testing. There are two tools that every good ebook developer likely already has at the ready: EPUB Checker and Ace by DAISY. The first is a validator, the second an accessibility checker. There are many ways to use EPUB Checker; the link above is to my favourite drag-and-drop tool.
Let’s talk about Ace by DAISY for a minute. Ace is an excellent tool in your toolchest. It will scan an ebook and produce a very actionable report about any accessibility issues. It will help you sort through the various levels of WCAG (web content accessibility guidelines), the EPUB accessibility baseline spec, best practices, and it presents a clear view of the structure and navigation of a book in addition to a way to see the image descriptions. It is very practical but I want to caution you that it is just one tool. It goes about 30% of the way to checking the a11y of an ebook; the remainder must be accomplished by a human operator. Ace can’t guarantee accessibility nor can it be used to certify the accessibility of an ebook or an ebook publishing program. (Sideyeing publishers who claim their ebooks are certified by Ace!!) I see this happening now and then and want to caution against it in the strongest terms. Ace is just the start of the QA process, not the end.
The other two resources are a checklist that I use and adjusted for general use and which is available as a free download from my website. And a link to the Thorium Reading System, the desktop and mobile reading app that is developed with accessibility at its heart. It is a very good place to test your ebooks for the user experience. It has robust layout controls and a built-in screen reader. It is also in constant development which means that the developers are responding to reader’s needs in a healthy way.
PDF Accessibility
PDF accessibility is an area of the world that gets a lot of attention and development in document accessibility circles. I have three resources that I hope will be useful. Those of you who work with LaTeX, may find this guide to accessible PDF handy. The second link is to a handy-dandy downloadable checklist from the government of Canada, which has strict internal mandates for document a11y. And finally, the fine people at Vision Australia have a terrific roundup around accessible PDF.
EPUB Accessibility
Another Australian organization has a truly excellent guide, Books Without Barriers, a very thorough guide to accessible publishing. If you are new to accessible publishing, this document is a great place to start. Fair warning: it is more than 200 pages but that’s what makes it such a great and thorough resource.
The second document to link to is to a whitepaper that I had a hand in along with my friends at Westchester Publishing Services, EPUB Accessiblity with a View Toward the EAA and Ongoing Compliance. It is a rigorous look at EPUB through an accessibility lens, with useful sections about workflow planning and training resources.
And we can’t talk about ebooks without talking about the EPUB accessibility specification, which is at the 1.2 iteration. This link has detailed, technical information that is as up-to-date as possible (Dated September 12!). It is focused on discoverability — one of the most important issues in digital publishing at present. There are useful links in this doc to both the EPUB spec and the EPUB a11y 1.2 explainer which breaks down WCAG success criteria and how EPUB veers away from that slightly.
Lastly there is a link to a good explainer article on InclusivePublishing.org about recent changes to EPUB. While ebooks are mostly a mature product, there are updates, some significant when it comes to accessibility in particular.
Legislation
The legislative landscape is one worth spending a few minutes on. It is confusing and a little muddled. The EAA has been in force for more than a year now and where are we at? Good question. There a couple of newsy articles linked to here on the state of enforcement: One Year of EAA Enforcement: What Has Actually Happened and One Year of EAA Enforcement in Publishing: Has Any Publisher Actually Been Sued? Essentially, some sabre rattling but not much at all in terms of fines. Many regulatory enforcement agencies are fielding complaints and conducting investigations. For now, it appears that publishing is flying under the regulatory radar but this is not a situation anyone should get comfortable with. The EAA remains the most robust accessibility legislation and I look forward to it impacting Canada. (Mark Carney, call me!)
Title II of the ADA is a different matter. As many of you are likely well aware, it impacts publishers differently. It comes at the accessibility question from a library and public procurement perspective but the work for publishers is the same: produce accessible content that is well described. The links here are to three very useful articles on the Inclusive Publishing blog about the legislation, what publishers need to do, and what the delay in compliance dates means for publishers.
It’s thorny and not always clear, but publishers can’t stick their collective heads in the sand. These links will help sort out your responsibilities.
Certification
One possible way to inoculate oneself against the repercussions of legislation is to get certified. There are a number of bodies offering certification now: Benetech, eBound Canada, and Fondazione LIA are the main ones. Vision Ireland offers a cerfication that is based on Benetech’s scheme. I won’t go into details on the programs and their differences, but I highly recommend the process as it is an accessibility education in itself.
MathML in EPUB and PDF
MathML is another thorny topic in digital publishing that is slowly getting smoothed out. I’ve got a number of links that will help you sort out your math issues — first in PDF, where there are new and very thorough best practices. The third link is to a DAISY webinar, Creating and Reading Accessible Math, from a number of years ago but which is very much still relevant and will help developers form a foundation of knowledge around MathML implementations.
For those not aware, it is now possible to create MathML natively in InDesign for export to both PDF and EPUB. The question of native math support in various places is a hot topic. The first link is to news about the exciting work happening with Microsoft tools. We hope there will be similar news from other major vendors soon.
The last two links are to guidelines for creating Math content. The Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics has exceptionally detailed and technical guidelines for Math in EPUB. And Benetech’s Diagram Center — coming in clutch once again! — has a site with many valuable tools for learning how to code math and how to execute it.
Artificial Intelligence
My final topic today is artificial intelligence. I bet you thought you almost got away without hearing about AI for once. Sorry except not sorry. I am a big advocate for exploiting AI for supporting accessibility work, especially as opposed to using it for creativity. The inimitable DAISY consortium has a tremendous AI tool called Fido which is a kind of clearing house for AI and automated tasks. I encourage you to connect it to your AI subscriptions and give it a whirl before passing judgement. It requires a human in the loop, of course, and I would never use Fido’s outpout without checking it over. But some of the more tedious a11y-related tasks can be easily taken care of like marking up language shifts, converting from PDF, describing images, and analysing heading structure.
The supporting links are to a review of Fido, and a webinar on AI and accessible publishing. The final link is to an IPA article that talks about AI use in this space somewhat and how we collectively need to make sure that people with the lived experience of a print disability aren’t left out of the work of developing AI tools.
There are two newsletters that I recommend: Inclusive Publishing and the Accessible Publishing Learning Network (APLN).
News and Resources
Because accessible publishing is a vibrant and changing space, I want to leave you today with a number of resources to deepen and strengthen your understanding of accessibility, and also to keep up on news and updates. The UK group PAAG is a great place to start. They have a vibrant LinkedIn group, annual surveys, and quarterly meetings that anyone can participate in. They are a fantastic resource for anyone’s accessibility journey.
The Accessible Books Consortium, the WIPO group that oversees the Marrakesh Treaty, has an annual award for excellence in accessible publishing that is worth looking into. They have two awards: one for a publisher, one for an initiative.
Accessible Libraries is an informational site created by a coalition of Canadian library groups to educate about accessibility from the library side of things They have webinars, learning paths, and several deeply useful resources for readers, publishers and librarians.
I have two newsletters that I suggest you sign up for. I promise you won’t get too many emails (because who needs more emails?!) but you will get the occasional nuggets from both Inclusive Publishing and the Accessible Publishing Learning Network (APLN). Both subs will help you keep up with news, specifications, new markup methods/formats/PD opportunities, etc.
And, last but not least, is the American Library Association (ALA)’s accessibility site. This is another highly trustworthy set of resources, guidelines, and tools for publishers and others to use as they develop a set of accessibility best practices.
There is a lot here — informational, technical, and otherwise — for you to digest. What am I missing? Please leave a contact or email me directly with resources that should be here.
A webinar version of this post and a supplementary PDF download are available at the BISG Knowledge Center.
