Luc Audrain Hachette Livre Head of digitalization

Publishers activity For books, publishers are at the origin of content Contracts with authors Editing process of author’s text From authors to published books, editing skills are used to : Edit text Design pages with images and graphics Produce PDF output to printer Convert to digital version 18/03/20132

Publishers digital activity Digital version of books are built on edited contents whatever the process or the technology used to produce the ebook file. Digital accessibility then depends directly on the editing tasks and on the good practices used at the very beginning of content creation. 18/03/20133

Tools for content editing Since the 80’s, text editing has been eased by text processors on personal computers This has been the best and the worst things to occur for accessibility Best as text is not anymore ink on paper but also character codes that a software can read aloud Worst as ill use of text processors lead to good printing of non structured, non navigable, non semantic content, producing non accessible digital products! 18/03/20134

Good practices are at hand Text processors can : Help separate content and presentation Help structure documents Give meaning to content Enable navigation in content Define language of text Provide tools for Math Good practices rely on the use of these available functions Inspired by creating-accessible-epub-3-files.htmlhttp:// creating-accessible-epub-3-files.html 18/03/20135

Content and presentation separation Content oriented typography Text typography has no meaning in itself, it is derived from semantic Typography reveals the meaning but it is not the meaning Meaningful information is interoperable, accessible, not presentation Practical issues Use semantic character styles names in Word Names of styles is more important than presentation Example Citation of a work title In the middle of paragraph, title of a work is generally printed in italic, but better use a style named Work_Title than direct italic 18/03/20136

Document hierarchy Consider any content as a tree within a container (the document), root and hierarchy of branches : parts, chapters, sections, etc. This hierarchy should be explicit in sections headings Practical issues Learn to use hierarchy tools at hand in text processors Example Tree panel in Word 18/03/20137

Content meaning Name any piece of information even if its presentation isn’t different from the rest of the text! With semantically named styles, content structure is portable Semantic in EPUB is then easy to declare Practical issues Use paragraph or character style names to identify any information In editing process, do not present content as it will be printed but to reveal its meaning Example : Use symbolic decoration in text processor 18/03/20138

Document navigation The structure of the document is the foundation of navigation Table of content is not a part of the document It is the summary of its structure Practical issues Learn to build table of content from the structure of the document. Every text software has built in tools to extract a table of content from styles Examples Hierarchy level of paragraph styles Indexes : use index marks in text Index is not a part of the documents : it’s an extraction of document places ordered alphabetically It can be generated from in-text indexing markup 18/03/20139

Language of text In a word processor text is always written in a language, be it the default one Better be aware of the language used as you type Practical issues Language can be explicitly defined On paragraphs styles globally On characters styles for some words Language is used for orthographic and grammar checking 18/03/201310

Math tools Math formulæ are objects full of meaning, not just signs and numbers This meaning has to be explicit in the object Practical issues Use Math tools within word proccessors These tools work in Math context Math objects can be exported in MathML 18/03/201311

Processes and standards XML first production processes have considerably helped accessibility Page composition built upon structured text Book semantic vocabulary Mandatory XML output Correctness checked before archiving Preserve paper page numbering Unicode standard for characters Automated eBook production Conversion process from XML to HTML Based on semantic tagging 18/03/201312

Paper pages Digital production processes must keep track of page breaks Include this constraints in RFP for EPUB production Practical issues Know how this works in different EPUB readers Check correctness in validating EPUBs Example iBooks shows pages numbers in EPUBs 18/03/201313

So, where is the problem? Year and years of training on : Content and presentation separation Structuration to add semantic and hierarchy to content Courses have been given on : Word processors advanced functions Semantic styling XML and its advantages Seems to be inefficient in the end ! Newcomers repeat ill use Good practices never spread 18/03/201314

Call for e-accessibility as a skill Accessibility needs : Match good practices for editorial content creation Are available in every day publishing tools This is a call for a Copernic revolution in training Training programs should be built from accessibility and digital needs : It will benefit digital AND paper production It will help better content repurpose on any direction It will match accessibility needs in content 18/03/201315