Accessibility

From the publisher’s perspective

Chris RogersPenguin Books UK

• Fulfil our corporate social responsibility

• Fulfil any legal obligations• Take advantage of any untapped

markets (definitely a big bonus)

• Everyone's• Starts with the people who understand the

technology• Our responsibility to educate colleagues in

Editorial, Design (even Sales)

• 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

• 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.

• 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

• CSS styling means nothing to screen readers• Meaning should be conveyed via mark-up, not

style• An excellent example is feature boxes:

• Bad example:

• Feature box has no indication that it is separate from the main reading flow

• A better way:

• Heading indicates that it is in addition to main content.

• Heading is an <h5>, not a <p>

• 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:

• Bad example:• Data-sets

differentiated by colour can be difficult to read for the colour-blind

• To a colour-blind person it could look like this:

• A better way to do it:

• Combines colour and pattern

• 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

• 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>

• 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>

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?

All images must have appropriate alt attributes!

• 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”/>

• For example:

<img... alt=‘A triangular sign with an exclamation mark in the centre’/>

• For example:

<img... alt=‘WARNING!’/>

• 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!’/>

THE DREADED TABLES!•There is no good way to display large, complex tables on today’s generation of e-readers

Fixed-layout ebooks•Too many different formats•Hard enough to create in the first place•Still, all the rules previously mentioned can be applied

Poetry•Will require text-to-speech facilities to improve•Very difficult in ebooks, as proper visual formatting often requires hacks

• 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

• epub:describedat could give us a good way of providing long-form backup content for images

• 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?

• 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

• ‘Accessible EPUB3’, O'Reilly• RNIB, IDPF websites• Vendors specification documents (Amazon

have some great guidelines on creating tables)

• Chris.rogers@uk.penguingroup.com• @fullcapstwit• #eprdctn hour, Wednesdays 4pm GMT