Making Digital Publishing AccessibleFebruary 11, 2008

2

VP Engineering (SoftBook Press) 1997:

In 2000, acquired by:

Formed in 2004 to take technology forward:

Garth Conboy

3

Publishers and conversion houses were producing

custom files for many Reading Systems Adobe (PDF), Microsoft (lit), Palm/eReader (pdb)

MobiPocket, Gemstar/ETI, Sony

OEBPS 2000 - 2006

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.QuickTime™ and a

TIFF (Uncompressed) decompressorare needed to see this picture.

4

2005: IDPF Ad Hoc Content Team What’s holding us back?

Publishers & conversion houses must generate multiple eBook

formats for sales & distribution

OEBPS Reading Systems may start with similar source, but perform

platform-specific processing or DRM wrapping

Consumers can’t generally move content from one Reading System

to another

High level: Content flow is negatively impacted by conversion time and expense

Sparse choices of content drive down consumer interest

OEBPS 2000 - 2006

5

Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004 (IDEA 2004)

Impacts how and when blind and print disabled students receive their textbooks

Establishes the National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard (NIMAS)

Based on OEBPS and DIASY Establishes the National Instructional Materials Access Center

(NIMAC) Requires publishers to create NIMAS files for core print

instructional materials for K-12 Provides exemptions to copyright laws to protect the publisher

Accessibility & NIMAS

Larry Skutchan, American Printing House for the Blind

6

OEBPS Working Group (re-)chartered in March 2006 Mission: Update OEBPS 1.2 to improve the adoption and

viability of the standard as both a cross-reading system interchange and production format as well as a final publication delivery format.

Requirements/Directions (abridged): Align with current standard on which OEBPS is based (e.g. XML,

namespaces, CSS, XHTML) Support vector graphics Support embedded fonts

Enhance OEBPS accessibility and navigation (i.e.

declarative TOC)

OEBPS Working Group

7

Solutions (abridged): Current standards (XML 1.1, XML Namespaces)

Two “Preferred Vocabularies” Valid XHTML (required XHTML modules)

Valid DTBook (NIMAS)

Navigation – require DAISY NCX (NIMAS)

Vector graphics – added SVG as Core Media Type

Embedded vector fonts – added @font-face CSS

Status Final approval as IDPF standard: September, 2007

OEBPS Working Group

8

Common OEBPS Container Working Group chartered November 2005

Mission: Standardize a unified (across Reading System) Open eBook Publication Structure container format.

Requirements/Directions (abridged): Standardize the OEBPS container format Publishers and conversion houses will produce only this format

for entry into the distribution and/or sales channels Unsecured content may be directly exchanged between Reading

Systems that support the container format Content interoperability between Reading Systems is a high-

level goal. Exchange of non-secured content between reading systems is a good first step

Common OEBPS Container WG

9

OCF: OEBPS Container Format ZIP-based archive of publication parts

Define mechanism for inclusion of alternate renditions,

cryptography, signatures and rights information

It’s just ZIP!

Status Final approval as IDPF standard: October, 2006

No need to wait! When creating a ZIP archive of

OPS/OEBPS make it an OCF archive – now!

“epub” is OPS/OEBPS wrapped in OCF container

Common OEBPS Container WG

10

OEBPS Publication in ZIP ContainermimetypeMETA-INF/ container.xml [manifest.xml] [metadata.xml] [signatures.xml] [encryption.xml] [rights.xml]OEBPS/ Great Expectations.opf cover.html chapters/ chapter01.html chapter02.html … HTML and other files for the remaining chapters …

Common OEBPS Container WG

11

DRM generally limits accessibility

Solutions None

Finger-printing/water-marking

Interchangeable DRM

Common DRM

Likely IDPF technical direction in 2008

DRM and Accessibility

12

Q & AQ & A

Q & A