EPUB e-books for visual impaired people Cristina Mussinelli Frankfurt, Room Facette, Hall 3, West October 12, 2011

The LIA Project 2 When in a two- year period of time

LIA aim to create a service delivering online accessibile ebooks (fiction and non fiction) for visually impaired people By the end of 2012 LIA will make an online catalogue available for 3000 ebooks in accessible version, periodically updated A special attention will be spent to use of specific metadata The project is financed by the Italian Ministry of Culture within a specific call aimed at providing services for blind and visual impaired people The project foresees the collaboration of the Italian Blind Union The LIA Project 3

ebooks market is starting to grow transition vs fully digital process based on standard (EPUB) LIA’s aim is finding the best production system to realize ebook into accessible version assuring rights of all actors blind people or partially sighted, authors and publishers LIA is focusing on: - EPUB as standard delivery format, nowadays widely used for ebook in the trade market - integration of mainstream devices (ereaders, smartphone and tablets) with assistive technologies - mainstream channels as online e-booksellers and libraries aside specialised channels - standard metadata: ONIX 3, list code 196 (in collaboration with mEDRA and EDItEUR) 4 The LIA Project

Survey on users’ habits: books and technology people Cristina Mussinelli

Analyse of the relationship between VIP and reading - How much and how often do they read - Which kind of books do they prefer - Which reading instruments use: formats, software and devices Survey carried out in collaboration with Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca and Doxa: phone interviews - Focus group: 10 deep interviews with students years old Panel included members of UIC (Italian Blind and visually impaired people Association), CNUDD (University Disable Services) and Istitute of Blind of Milan. The survey 6

Frequency of reading and number of books 7 Average number of read books per person in the last 12 months 9,2 Not-disable people who have read at least a book in the last 12 months 46,8% (Source: Istat 2010)

Literary genres 8 (Question d2 : I’m going to list some genres of books, we’d like to know if you read at least a book of this genre in the last 12 months) Fiction 44%

Type of Books 9 ( Question d3 : What kinds of books do you usually like to read? )

The most used formats 10 Digital Braille 29,7% ( Question d5 : What kinds of formats do you usually use to read? Question d6 : Which are your favourite reading formats?)

Top 7 Formats to read according to age 11

Top 4 Screen Readers used 12 ( Question d16 : Now I’m going to list some reading software. Can you tell us if you know them and where you use them?)

Top 4 most used and most unknown device 13 ( Question d15: Now I’m going to list some reading device. Can you tell us if you know them and where you use them?)

Top 4 most used device according to age 14

Accessible e-bookspeople Cristina Mussinelli

It’s a complex interaction among: - File created by the publisher - Reading software - Assistive technology - Specific reading device - DRM - User’s disability …so LIA is testing What does it means “accessible ebook”? 16

Six Italian publishers representing different kind of trade publishers provided LIA some EPUB files (fiction and non- fiction books) already available in the market In collaboration with Istitute of Blind People “F. Cavazza” of Bologna and accessibility experts LIA: - defined the accessibility’s features creating “File accessibility features list” - analysed the structure of the files provided by the publishers following the list - transformed the file provided by the publishers in accessible EPUB - is now testing the accessibility of the file in real use cases “normal” EPUB vs accessible EPUB 17

File accessibiliy features list 18

EPUB is chosen as preferred format because it is the current standard used internationally in the publishing sector for ebook creation and distribution The new EPUB 3 version offers a greater scope of accessibility as the intention is that the new standard will converge with the delivery capabilities of the DAISY standard A major goal of EPUB 3 is to facilitate content accessibility and hence general content reuse by both humans and automated workflows Main accessibility features in EPUB 3: - Better navigation: complete and flexible rapresentation of the structure of the publication - Semantic markup: new html5 tags (section, nav, aside, etc.) + semantic inflection via EPUB: type (chapter, part, footnote, dedication, titlepage, etc.) Why EPUB? 19

Use of headings as headings provide users of assistive technologies devices such as screen readers with an additional – and quick- method for navigating through a document Ordered and unordered list as organizing items in a list (properly tagged!) allow users of assistive technologies to quick understand the structure and the number of items Tables are useful for showing data. It is important to properly use table headers to let users of assistive technologies know what the headers of certain cell are at any time Caption and summary if properly used contain a description of the contents and the structure of the table providing the visual impaired people an idea of what to expect Good rules for creating EPUB accessible files 20

Accessibility’s test on EPUB files with: - different devices: pc, ereaders, tablets and smartphone; - reading software: ADE 1.8, iBooks, Bluefire, Ibis Reader, ePub Reader; - assistive technologies: Jaws, NVDA, Magic, ZoomText, VoiceOver, Zoom; Usability test of the most common mainstream ereaders (Sony PRS 650, Leggo IBS, Kindle, iPad) Analysis of DRM’s impact on file’s accessibility: social, Adobe, Fairplay, Kindle DRM Analysis of the accessibility of the most important Italian online ebook stores Final results of the testing phase will be available at the end of October Testing phase 21

Thank you very much!