accessibility from the publisher\'s perspective
DESCRIPTION
Technical presentation on eBook accessibility from Tools of Change Frankfurt 2012.TRANSCRIPT
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Accessibility
From the publisher’s perspective
Chris RogersPenguin Books UK
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• Fulfil our corporate social responsibility
• Fulfil any legal obligations• Take advantage of any untapped
markets (definitely a big bonus)
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• Everyone's• Starts with the people who understand the
technology• Our responsibility to educate colleagues in
Editorial, Design (even Sales)
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• Ensure that our eBooks are created in the most accessible way possible
• This is both a design issue and a technical issue
• I’ll be talking mostly about the technical issues
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• What do we mean by that?• Assistive technologies generally rely on
hierarchy of elements to determine document structure
i.e.• <h1-5> then <p> then inline elements such as
<em>, <strong> etc.
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• Don’t use a <p> if you really mean <h5>• Don’t use <i> if you really mean <em>, don’t
use <b> if you really mean <strong>
• <i> and <b> are presentational elements and have no semantic meaning
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• CSS styling means nothing to screen readers• Meaning should be conveyed via mark-up, not
style• An excellent example is feature boxes:
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• Bad example:
• Feature box has no indication that it is separate from the main reading flow
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• A better way:
• Heading indicates that it is in addition to main content.
• Heading is an <h5>, not a <p>
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• Another example – charts and graphs• Very difficult subject – no good way to make
charts totally accessible without also providing the data in tabular form
• But we can make them a little better:
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• Bad example:• Data-sets
differentiated by colour can be difficult to read for the colour-blind
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• To a colour-blind person it could look like this:
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• A better way to do it:
• Combines colour and pattern
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• Links nicely with using the correct structural/semantic elements
• Don't use lower level elements with style to convey heading styles
• Don't use style on text to convey meaning
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• For example:
• “I am really MAD that this sentence isn’t accessible!”<p>I am really <span class=‘angryRed’>MAD</span> that
this sentence isn’t accessible</p>
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• A better way:
• “I am really MAD that this sentence isn’t accessible!”<p>I am really <strong class=‘angryRed’>MAD</strong>
that this sentence isn’t accessible</p>
<p>I am really <strong class=‘angryRed’>MAD</strong>
that this sentence isn’t accessible</p>
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Basic rule
If you removed the CSS, and just used the basic styling of the ebook-reader, would it still be readable and make
sense?
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All images must have appropriate alt attributes!
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• When a screen-reader encounters an image, it reads out the alt attribute
• Keep in mind the alt attribute is meant as a replacement for the image
• Sometimes the meaning of the image is more important than the image itself…
<img src=‘../image/car.jpg’ alt=‘A picture of a red car”/>
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• For example:
<img... alt=‘A triangular sign with an exclamation mark in the centre’/>
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• For example:
<img... alt=‘WARNING!’/>
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• The text in the letter is part of the story.
• It is more important to the reader than the image itself
<img... alt=‘Are you a grumptious honker or a talent tooter? Come and try out for this yearly’s pan-troll-mime!’/>
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THE DREADED TABLES!•There is no good way to display large, complex tables on today’s generation of e-readers
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Fixed-layout ebooks•Too many different formats•Hard enough to create in the first place•Still, all the rules previously mentioned can be applied
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Poetry•Will require text-to-speech facilities to improve•Very difficult in ebooks, as proper visual formatting often requires hacks
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• EPUB3!• epub:type• enhanced metadata support• Full HTML5 support will give access to new
semantic/structural elements• Full SMIL (Read Aloud) support, you'll even be able to
indicate the correct inflections for words • All these things will give screen readers the ability to
read books more and more realistically
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• epub:describedat could give us a good way of providing long-form backup content for images
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• There is a huge amount that can potentially be done to make ebooks more and more accessible
• Time, technical expertise and money are always mitigating factors
• Often ebooks will be created out of house, what do you do then?
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• Always QA your ebooks with accessibility in mind
• Brief your conversion suppliers carefully to ensure they are doing the right things
• Making your ebooks accessible shouldn’t cost a lot, as long as it is built into your workflow
• The advantages outweigh the disadvantages
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• ‘Accessible EPUB3’, O'Reilly• RNIB, IDPF websites• Vendors specification documents (Amazon
have some great guidelines on creating tables)
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• [email protected]• @fullcapstwit• #eprdctn hour, Wednesdays 4pm GMT