What the Heck is all this EPUB Hubbub About? 14 November, 2018

Speakers George Kerscher, Chief Innovations Officer, DAISY Consortium Becky Gibson, Senior Accessibility Strategist, Knowbility Rachel Comerford, Senior Director of Content Standards and Accessibility, Macmillan Learning Rick Johnson. Vice President , Product Strategy, VitalSource Technologies, LLC

George Kerscher Chief Innovations Officer, DAISY Consortium kerscher@montana.com

Excited to Have Reached the Tipping Point Actors Engaged Accessibility Community Standards Organizations Publishing Service Companies Tech Companies Higher Education DSO Professionals

Call For Systematic Change in Publishing Accessible Instructional Materials (AIM) Commission on Higher Education Held public forums across the USA Students with disabilities spoke out and were heard Published materials were not accessible Journals were not accessible Software was not accessible Delivered to Congress 18 recommendations in 2011 EPUB 3 was the recommended format for published materials

Strategic Approach Start with getting buy-in on a baseline for accessibility of published materials Gather key players in the ecosystem Agree to focus on publishing standards Develop an accessibility standard for publishing Develop an all-time first for conformance and certification Build the checking tools to support accessibility Test reading Apps for accessibility Promote the inclusive publishing society

HTML, as the Fundamental Document Format HTML started out as a way to publish documents No need for the clutter you find on most websites You have all the building blocks for accessible publications Headings Paragraphs List items Tables Etc. etc. etc. All perfectly accessible And no tagging needed

Formal Standards Defining the Format EPUB 3 is a formal specification now under the W3C HTML is the primary file inside an EPUB All wrapped up in a ZIP container Identifies the Table of Contents Correct reading order Page navigation can be included Uses CSS for styling Font size and colors selectable Text reflows to fit screen size

EPUB Accessibility Conformance and Discovery Specification First published as a standard in January 2017 Applies to all releases of EPUB Builds on WCAG 2.0 Adds publishing specific requirements For the first time, accessibility conformance can be tested

Accessibility Conformance Metadata Conforms to WCAG A or AA can be included Accessibility hazards should be identified Must include an understandable accessibility summary Identifies who certifies the accessibility claims

Accessibility Checker for EPUB (Ace by DAISY) Funded by a Google Impact Challenge Grant Intended to have profound impact in the Inclusive Publishing Society First release in January 2018 Free and open source Huge adoption in educational publishing Easy to use and understand Reports accessibility errors Reports conformance metadata Integrates with software and processes Guides publishers on how to improve their materials Can be used by professors producing their own EPUB Distributors can now expose accessibility information before purchasing

Where Ace is used Ace by DAISY is targeted for anybody producing EPUB Educational Publishers have jumped to use Ace by DAISY Supply chain venders integrate Ace by DAISY Ace is integrated in to authoring tools Individual authors are encouraged to use Ace Professors producing EPUB are encourage to use Ace Distributors can weed out inaccessible publications Great EPUB can be identified Procurement processes are encouraged to use the metadata distributors expose

Third Party Certification of Content Conformance can be verified by an independent third party Global Certified Accessible (GCA) are non-profits throughout the world providing certification Benetech in the USA is providing this service Certified by Benetech can be found in metadata Educational publishers are taking advantage of the service Ace by DAISY is used to facilitate checking Manual checking must be done Simple Manual Accessibility Reporting Tool (SMART) is available to help

Becky Gibson Senior Accessibility Strategist Knowbility becky@knowbility.org

Advantages of EPUB

Based on Open Web Standards HTML5, JavaScript, CSS SMIL SVG MathML Logos displayed for HTML5, JavaScript, CSS3, MathML, SVG, and SMIL SMIL = Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language, a markup language for describing multimedia presentations;

EPUB is dynamic and adaptable The included image depicts the different devices and screen sizes.

Supported by the major mobile devices Plus many other 3rd party EPUB reader apps Apple iBooks and Google Play logos displayed. No native epub reader from Microsoft that I can find but some 3rd party apps.

NOT designed for print fidelity EPUB is designed to be dynamic and run on different sized screens and platforms. PDF is designed for print fidelity and reproducing fixed-sized printed documents electronically.

Supports MathML

Searchable & Easier to Translate Based on Web Standards Screen shot of searching within iBooks on an iPhone

Create & Share Annotations iBooks Highlight & Bookmark iBooks Notes Screen shot of searching within iBooks on an iPhone and another of Notes in iBooks.

Change Fonts & Styles Dynamically iBooks w/ Changed Font Face, Size, and Theme iBooks Font & Style Options Two screenshots: One of iBooks font & style options and in the other the theme has been changed to night (white text on black background) and the font has been made much larger.

Text to Speech & Media Overlay Readium Media Overlay Example Full URL - http://weba11y.com/Examples/Readium/ReadiumFFDemo.html; have local file – captionDemo.html of the same demo that can use during the presentation. Readium Demo (1:49 – 2:50)

Interactive Documentation Readium displaying embedded Video with Scripted Controls Readium screen shot showing embedded video with scripted controls

No More Pinch, Zoom, and Pan! PDF example demonstrating the need for zooming and scrolling on an mobile phone 2 PDF screen shots to demonstrate the need for scrolling in PDF documents. The images demonstrate the need for scrolling when viewing a PDF on a small screen. The first image shows the left hand portion of the PDF and the second image shows the right hand portion after the user has scrolled.

Size the EPUB to fit your display With UI Elements Without UI Elements 2 iBooks screen shots demonstrating how EPUBs can be resized for the device

PDF Accessibility is Hard Difficult to generate tagged PDF Requires PDF Accessibility knowledge No access to interaction, Math, rich graphics Costly to remediate No community control to “fix” the specification

Why Corporations Choose EPUB Customers want mobile friendly documentation served up in the Cloud

Documentation Requirements based on standards accessible mobile friendly & responsive easily translated Images depicting W3C, accessibility, various device sizes, and globalization are included.

Rachel Comerford Senior Director of Content Standards and Accessibility Macmillan Learning Rachel.Comerford@macmillan.com

Rick Johnson Vice President, Product Strategy VitalSource Technologies, LLC Rick.Johnson@vitalsource.com