Putting eAccessibility at the core of information systems EPUB 3 – ebooks designed for all Markus Gylling, CTO, IDPF & DAISY Consortium 26/03/2012, Cité des sciences et de l'industrie, Paris

What is the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF)? Not for profit Trade and Standards organization with over 300 members from 35+ countries, working together to advance the Digital Publishing Ecosystem with open, interoperable standards Members include publishers, vendors, libraries, national associations, government and industry organizations Focus is EPUB digital publication format

EPUB standardized Assoc. Am. Pub. (AAP), UK Pub. Assoc. (PA) endorse Google: 1M PD EPUBs - Sony store to EPUB Apple iBooks eReaders smartphone apps - Most Kindle sales from titles ingested as EPUB - EPUB EPUB 3 WG chartered EPUB 3.0 (October) - EBPAJ endorse Readium EPUB 3 Reader - Sub-projects: -Fixed Layout -Indexes -Dictionaries -… Adoption Timeline

Open, industry-driven e-book format standard Builds on W3C web standards (XML, HTML5, SVG, …) Is nature agnostic: usable for books, magazines, corporate documents,... Includes rich layout, rich media and interactivity features Has extensive accessibility support built-in… EPUB 3 in five bullets

Accessible EPUB 3Accessible EPUB 3

Text-to-Speech Metadata Structure and Semantics Rich Navigation Web Techniques (HTML5/WCAG) Media Overlays ARIA EPUB 3 accessibility

The complete chain must be accessible: production: authoring, print-first or digital creation ebook: format and features distribution interface (retail, library, etc.) reading system design and features assistive technology (AT) itself the complete chain

The DNA of your document: describes the data Enables intelligent behaviors in reading systems Facilitates access to content and simplifies navigation HTML5/EPUB 3 improves the base vocabulary section, aside, article audio, video, canvas, figure MathML, SVG EPUB 3 adds annotation mechanism for domain- specific semantic inflection: epub:type structure and semantics

rich navigation EPUB 3 includes the required and dedicated Navigation Document, which offers the following declarative navigation features: TOC navigation –navigate the main publication structure Page navigation – navigate to positions corresponding to page boundaries in a print source (and the source publication can be identified using metadata) Landmarks – navigate to fundamental recurring book components Extensible for additional publication-specific navigation list types

EPUB3 includes DAISY-style synchronization of text with pre-recorded audio Bridges the gap between the audio book and the text-based ebook – lets the user decide on modalities media overlays

EPUB 3 adds ability for producers to include pronunciation and prosody instructions: PLS SSML CSS 3 Speech Lexicons can be reused text-to-speech (TTS)

interactivity and ARIA Scripted content poses new challenges for usability and accessibility EPUB 3 includes rules for script integration: progressive enhancement Accessibility/Usability features native to the HTML5 specification W3C WAI/WCAG ( By adoption of HTML5, EPUB 3 also includes support for W3C ARIA markup ( Provides state and property information to AT dynamically

accessibility metadata Facilitate discovery of accessible publications in delivery channels New extension to ONIX to describe accessibility features of e-books – codelist 196 – vocabulary for description of accessibility of an e- publication – works with ONIX 2.1 and ONIX 3 – process in place for revision and extension ONIX records can be referenced from EPUB 3 publications and embedded within them

inclusive publishing EPUB 3: a state-of-the art foundation for inclusive e-publishing Design for Usability – target all users Sound authoring practices and basic HTML5/WCAG Techniques will often be all you need for accessible output Use XHTML5 elements properly - structure and semantics Do not use bitmap images to convey information Use EPUB 3 semantic inflection where necessary Use basic Web HTML5/WCAG techniques Scripted content needs extra attention Use with care, and utilize ARIA techniques Add Media Overlays for a rich multimodal experience for everyone, get the accessibility benefits for free For academic books in particular, include TTS features Make use of accessibility metadata in retail channels

moving forward EPUB 3 Best Practices, continued Accessible EPUB 3 content: condensed online checklists accessibility evaluation tool Accessible EPUB 3 reading systems: implementation guidelines Readium: open source reading system reference implementation Inclusive authoring solutions accessibility features in mainstream authoring tools interactive widgets: reusable libraries

links and further reading EPUB 3 Specificationhttp://idpf.org/epub/30 IDPF current activitieshttp:// IDPF Forumshttp:// EPUB 3 Sampleshttp://code.google.com/p/epub-samples/ Readium projecthttp://readium.org/ W3C WAI WCAGhttp:// W3C WAI ARIAhttp:// ONIX and codelist 193http:// Functional criteria for e-book accessibility