EPUB 3 and DAISY State of the Art and Accessibility George Kerscher March 1, 2012

EPUB 3 and Accessibility The incorporation of the DAISY accessibility requirements into the non-proprietary EPUB 3 standard holds significant promise for the increased availability of commercial products that are useable, out of the box, by a wide range of consumers. Specification is available at

Accessible Publishing Ecosystem Wide array of pieces must fall into place in order to have an accessible publishing ecosystem: Commitments from the accessibility community Standards and Guidelines Samples Validation tools and accessibility checkers Accessible reading systems Math support Beautiful user interfaces User friendly ways to purchase content

Accessibility Guidelines and Support Guidelines in support of accessible publishing in EPUB 3 are accessible for all and will be frequently updated. ‘Accessible EPUB 3’, published by O’Reilly, available at: Accessibility Forum on the IDPF site:

EPUB 3 Sample Files The DC will collaborate with the IDPF and its Members and Friends to gather EPUB 3 content samples. Go to to check out the latest samples IDPF Samples include accessibility features

DAISY Consortium and IDPF The DAISY Consortium will continue to be committed to collaboration with the IDPF in the development and evolution of digital publishing standards The DC will monitor the development of accessibility check in EpubCheck and promote accessibility evaluations. EpubCheck project site is located at EPUB Validator is now available at The DAISY Consortium will participate in Readium Project to bring accessible EPUB 3 content and reading systems to users faster, learn more at

Other Ongoing Developments The mechanisms to handle descriptions of graphical content - the DIAGRAM Project, more info at: The DAISY Consortium will continue to monitor and influence HTML5 developments to increase the accessibility features in that specification The DAISY Consortium will support the NISO process for the Authoring and Interchange Framework for Adaptive XML Publishing The DAISY Consortium will continue to support the DAISY 2.02 and 3 Standards

DAISY Tools DAISY tool development to support EPUB 3: Tobi - accessible multimedia production tool DAISY Pipeline 2 - next generation framework for automated production of accessible materials

DAISY on Mobile Devices 10 mobile applications for reading DAISY books on mainstream devices are available and more in development DAISY Marketplace: applicationshttp:// applications

Portable DAISY Players PlexTalk Pocket, Milestone 212 and 312, BookSense XT and DS, BookPort, Victor Reader Stream, Olympus DM-4 and DM-5 players, ClassMate Reader

Hardware DAISY Players Array of legacy DAISY Players: NLS players, available at no cost to qualified people - does not support text-to-speech yet HumanWare Stratus players PlexTalk PTX 1 / Pro – DAISY Online Delivery compatible Braille Sense OnHand by HIMS can read DAISY books

DAISY Software Players EasyReader - supports DAISY and EPUB ReadHear PC and ReadHear Mac - support DAISY and EPUB, Math support Ida-reader - supports DAISY and EPUB Book Wizard Reader AMIS (free) Go to our website to see the list of DAISY players:

Mainstream Reading Systems Kindle - does not natively support EPUB Nook – Barnes & Noble working on improving accessibility Adobe Digital Editions - supports EPUB iBooks demo Share your experiences of using mainstream reading systems

Goal: Enriched Accessible Reading Experience for All Work with us to bring DAISY reading experience into the mainstream, to make ALL publications accessible to EVERYONE. Join the DAISY Consortium! More information is available at daisy.org