EPUB 3 DAISY & Accessibility George Kerscher, PhD Tools of Change February 2011

"In the Information Age, Access to Information is a Fundamental Human Right." George Kerscher: DAISY Consortium, Secretary General International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF), President Web Accessibility Initiative, Chair Steering Council

DAISY: The Gold Standard for Accessibility Libraries throughout the world serving persons with disabilities Educational and leisure publications National Instructional Materials Standard (NIMAS) in the USA NIMAS required in K-12 publishing

DAISY for Authoring & Interchange DAISY officially the ANSI/NISO Z39.86 is under revision Part A: Authoring & Interchange Emerged from the W3C closing of XHTML 2 WG XML modules with Semantics for an array of publications, e.g. journals, newspapers, books Totally extensible

Features from DAISY Incorporated in EPUB 3 DAISY Navigation (was NCX) EPUB Navigation is a MUST for both content and reading systems EPUB will support Audio and Text Synchronization using simple SMIL Semantics from DAISY Authoring and Interchange preserved

Preserving Semantics in EPUB Content Documents Publishing domains require semantics not present in HTML 5 More semantics is better for Everybody Books, newspapers, journals have their own specific semantics We can provide a "semantic inflection" to HTML elements by using an attribute Example: footnotes and footnote references Semantic inflections through attributes provide an extensible rich mechanism to add semantics

One Standard is Better than Two Part B of the ANSI/NISO Z39.86 deals with distribution DAISY plans to endorse EPUB 3 for distribution of fully accessible content DAISY Members expected to move to EPUB 3 over time DAISY Friends (for-profit companies) encourage to support EPUB 3 moving forward

What Makes an Accessible System? Website must be accessible Retail ordering must be accessible Content must conform to guidelines and best practices Reading System (user agent) must be fully accessible to a person using Assistive Technology

Threats to Accessibility Website and ordering not accessible Reading System created without persons with disabilities in mind Text content presented as images Incorrect reading order JavaScript used without regard to accessibility

Threats to Accessibility (continued) Animations with no descriptions Images without descriptive text Video without captions Video without audio descriptions SVG pages with no HTML equivalent text

Legal Issues in the Digital Publishing Space Digital books fall under different laws than print books: Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (the “Rehabilitation Act”) Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”). ASU in Phoenix, Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Pace University in New York City, Reed College in Portland, and Princeton University in New Jersey have settled with DOJ. June 29, 2010 Joint DOJ & DOE "Dear Colleague" Letter: Electronic Book Readers html

Upcoming Work Important to the DAISY Consortium The goal is to integrate with the mainstream DAISY accessibility guidelines and best practices MUST be woven into the fabric of publishing. Validation tools that go beyond mere XML validation: EPUB-check Conformance tests for User Agents to test their rendering

Current Needs Guidelines for publications Best practices that incorporate all aspects of accessibility Techniques for achieving what publishers want, while still being accessible Certification of EPUB content & User Agents, i.e. reading systems.

Work-in-Progress Big question: Must each reading system be accessible, or is it sufficient for one product to be accessible? If there are three restaurants on a block, is it legal for any of them to discriminate against any group of people? Dilemma: Will we get a fabulous reading experience from mainstream reading systems? Clearly, there will be different levels of accessibility, but we are looking for that rich reading experience; what does their "report card" show?

DAISY Reading Systems that Currently Support EPUB HumanWare Victor Reader Stream Dolphin EasyReader GH' s ReadHear PC and ReadHear for Mac, which includes support for MathML Icon BraillePlus Emerson, an open source basic reader.