Inclusive Publishing – Reading for Everyone

Neil Jarvisnjarvis@blindfoundation.org.nz

24 November 2014

DAISY Consortium

Vision

People have equal access to information and knowledge, regardless of disabilities

We envision a future where 'born accessible' publications are digitally created with accessibility features built in rather than built on. The second, a more costly approach requires conversion from an inaccessible format into a format that can be used by all people, including those who have a print disability.

DAISY Consortium

Mission

We work to create the best way to read and publish, for everybody, in the 21st century.

We advocate that the accessibility features be implemented in all mainstream publications and supported by mainstream reading applications and devices.

The era of 'born accessible' publications means that the future of publishing and reading will be inclusive for everyone, providing equal access to books and information for people with print disabilities.

DAISY Consortium

Key Activities

To achieve our mission, vision and goals we need to:

•Help creators, distributors and service providers of access-enhanced publications be more effective

•Help DAISY Consortium member organizations to work together to deliver inclusion

•Help authors and mainstream publishers build inclusion into their publishing processes

•Help publishing, reading technology and content authoring tool industries to enable a great reading experience for people reading with their eyes, ears or fingers

•Influence legal, copyright and standards bodies to make an efficient global marketplace that includes developing countries

•Help people with disabilities benefit from the improvements.

DAISY Consortium

Full Members

Associate Members

Friends & Developers

Publishers, Educators and Advocates

Individual Supporters

DAISY Focal Points

Accessible EPUB3

If an accessible EPUB3 book is produced, these are just some of the features it might have:•Easy navigation around the publication: having access to the content is great, but it is much better if one can navigate it efficiently and get to the part of the book needed;

•Integrated human narration or text-to-speech

•Verbalised descriptions of pictoral and other graphical information;

•Implemented Standardised accessibility guidelines: ensuring that the EPUB3 book is indeed accessible after all;

•If Digital Rights Management techniques are used, they don’t interfere with the assistive technology used to access the publication. If they do, this would also render an otherwise accessible publication inaccessible once more;

•It will enable the book to be read by a variety of devices and technologies used by print disabled people. An accessible publication which is tied to an inaccessible book reader again renders that publication inaccessible, regardless of how accessible the EPUB3 is itself.

How do we get to where we want to be?

• We need to deliver more mainstream accessible publications: this goes back to my earlier point about the need for blindness agencies to get out of the way of publishers and focus on what would still be hard to produce in the future;

• We must improve the efficiency of the customized accessibility publishers like the blindness agencies and allow us to focus on doing those things which are going to remain harder to do, particularly the demand for STEM. There is no reason though why our efforts cannot be fully integrated into the workflows of the mainstream publishers: that way, we can get them to help us to help them by placing the necessary structures and mark-up into their publications as part of their BAU workflow. That means the whole publishing process, from the author right through to the distribution of the final product should be thinking about accessibility;

• We need to modernize the whole copyright, legal and business framework under which we operate so that we no longer waste precious resources by duplicating each other’s work. We need to stop the Harry Potter Effect. This is where Marrakesh comes in;

• We need to improve the current technologies which are used for publishing and for reading so that accessibility is built in. So our efforts need to focus not just on the published books but also on the devices which will play them: the complete distribution channel must be made more accessible than it currently is. Too many e-readers are currently unusable by print disabled people. And what we do know is that people are consuming their content in many different ways: from the almost traditional DAISY talking book players through to smartphones and tablets. Even the authoring process needs to be involved here: publishing software needs to expressly remind content authors and publishers to include accessibility structures in their files, and to nag them if they fail to do that;

• We must ensure that print disabled people are coming on the journey with us. They need to be equipped with the technology, and the confidence to use that technology. Otherwise all our efforts will still only be of benefit to a tiny sub-section of the community who can both afford and use the technology they will need to access the content.

• Blindness agencies are going to have to play their part in that process, but the publishing industry is going to have to make it worth our while.

How do we get to where we want to be?

In Closing

Inclusive publishing benefits everyone: not just print disabled people. By being inclusive and accessible:

•Publishers will grow their customer base. They will have a competitive edge when it comes to tendering for government contracts: more and more countries are enacting legislation which requires inclusivity and this is only likely to increase;•It reduces costs to the consumer and to the publisher;•It allows specialist agencies to focus on producing more complex content which is harder to produce in mainstream workflows•In EPUB3, we have a tool to make this dream into a reality.

Inclusive publishing is not only possible, it is the way forward. There has never been a better opportunity to make it happen.

We need to work in partnership to achieve it, and we need to start now.

Useful Websites• DAISY Consortium

• www.daisy.org

• Accessible Books Consortium• www.AccessibleBooksConsortium.org

• Accessible Publishing Best Practice Guidelines for Publishers by Editeur:• http://www.visionip.org/inclusive_publishing/en/

accessible_best_practice_guidelines_for_publishers.html

• Readium organisation which is working to accelerate the adoption of EPUB3: • http://readium.org

• The Diagram Center’s Top Tips for creating EPUB3 files: • http://diagramcenter.org/54-9-tips-for-creating-accessible-epub-3-

files.html

Web blindfoundation.org.nz Phone 0800 24 33 33