1. What the Heck is all this EPUB Hubbub About?
14 November, 2018

2. Speakers George Kerscher, Chief Innovations Officer, DAISY Consortium
Becky Gibson, Senior Accessibility Strategist, Knowbility
Rachel Comerford, Senior Director of Content Standards and Accessibility, Macmillan Learning
Rick Johnson. Vice President , Product Strategy, VitalSource Technologies, LLC

3. George Kerscher
Chief Innovations Officer, DAISY Consortium

4. Excited to Have Reached the Tipping Point
Actors Engaged
Accessibility Community
Standards Organizations
Publishing Service Companies
Tech Companies
Higher Education DSO Professionals

5. Call For Systematic Change in Publishing
Accessible Instructional Materials (AIM) Commission on Higher Education
Held public forums across the USA
Students with disabilities spoke out and were heard
Published materials were not accessible
Journals were not accessible
Software was not accessible
Delivered to Congress 18 recommendations in 2011
EPUB 3 was the recommended format for published materials

6. Strategic Approach
Start with getting buy-in on a baseline for accessibility of published materials
Gather key players in the ecosystem
Agree to focus on publishing standards
Develop an accessibility standard for publishing
Develop an all-time first for conformance and certification
Build the checking tools to support accessibility
Test reading Apps for accessibility
Promote the inclusive publishing society

7. HTML, as the Fundamental Document Format
HTML started out as a way to publish documents
No need for the clutter you find on most websites
You have all the building blocks for accessible publications
Headings
Paragraphs
List items
Tables
Etc. etc. etc.
All perfectly accessible
And no tagging needed

8. Formal Standards Defining the Format
EPUB 3 is a formal specification now under the W3C
HTML is the primary file inside an EPUB
All wrapped up in a ZIP container
Identifies the Table of Contents
Correct reading order
Page navigation can be included
Uses CSS for styling
Font size and colors selectable
Text reflows to fit screen size

9. EPUB Accessibility Conformance and Discovery Specification
First published as a standard in January 2017
Applies to all releases of EPUB
Builds on WCAG 2.0
Adds publishing specific requirements
For the first time, accessibility conformance can be tested

10. Accessibility Conformance Metadata
Conforms to WCAG A or AA can be included
Accessibility hazards should be identified
Must include an understandable accessibility summary
Identifies who certifies the accessibility claims

11. Accessibility Checker for EPUB (Ace by DAISY)
Funded by a Google Impact Challenge Grant
Intended to have profound impact in the Inclusive Publishing Society
First release in January 2018
Free and open source
Huge adoption in educational publishing
Easy to use and understand
Reports accessibility errors
Reports conformance metadata
Integrates with software and processes
Guides publishers on how to improve their materials
Can be used by professors producing their own EPUB
Distributors can now expose accessibility information before purchasing

12. Where Ace is used Ace by DAISY is targeted for anybody producing EPUB
Educational Publishers have jumped to use Ace by DAISY
Supply chain venders integrate Ace by DAISY
Ace is integrated in to authoring tools
Individual authors are encouraged to use Ace
Professors producing EPUB are encourage to use Ace
Distributors can weed out inaccessible publications
Great EPUB can be identified
Procurement processes are encouraged to use the metadata distributors expose

13. Third Party Certification of Content
Conformance can be verified by an independent third party
Global Certified Accessible (GCA) are non-profits throughout the world providing certification
Benetech in the USA is providing this service
Certified by Benetech can be found in metadata
Educational publishers are taking advantage of the service
Ace by DAISY is used to facilitate checking
Manual checking must be done
Simple Manual Accessibility Reporting Tool (SMART) is available to help

14. Becky Gibson
Senior Accessibility Strategist Knowbility

15. Advantages of EPUB

16. Based on Open Web Standards
HTML5, JavaScript, CSS
SMIL
SVG
MathML
Logos displayed for HTML5, JavaScript, CSS3, MathML, SVG, and SMIL
SMIL = Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language, a markup language for describing multimedia presentations;

17. EPUB is dynamic and adaptable
The included image depicts the different devices and screen sizes.

18. Supported by the major mobile devices
Plus many other 3rd party EPUB reader apps
Apple iBooks and Google Play logos displayed. No native epub reader from Microsoft that I can find but some 3rd party apps.

19. NOT designed for print fidelity
EPUB is designed to be dynamic and run on different sized screens and platforms. PDF is designed for print fidelity and reproducing fixed-sized printed documents electronically.

20. Supports MathML

21. Searchable & Easier to Translate
Based on Web
Standards
Screen shot of searching within iBooks on an iPhone

22. Create & Share Annotations
iBooks Highlight &
Bookmark
iBooks Notes
Screen shot of searching within iBooks on an iPhone and another of Notes in iBooks.

23. Change Fonts & Styles Dynamically
iBooks w/ Changed Font Face, Size, and Theme
iBooks Font &
Style Options
Two screenshots: One of iBooks font & style options and in the other the theme has been changed to night (white text on black background) and the font has been made much larger.

24. Text to Speech & Media Overlay
Readium Media
Overlay Example
Full URL - have local file – captionDemo.html of the same demo that can use during the presentation.
Readium Demo (1:49 – 2:50)

25. Interactive Documentation
Readium displaying embedded Video with Scripted Controls
Readium screen shot showing embedded video with scripted controls

26. No More Pinch, Zoom, and Pan!
PDF example demonstrating the need for zooming and scrolling on an mobile phone
2 PDF screen shots to demonstrate the need for scrolling in PDF documents. The images demonstrate the need for scrolling when viewing a PDF on a small screen. The first image shows the left hand portion of the PDF and the second image shows the right hand portion after the user has scrolled.

27. Size the EPUB to fit your display
With UI Elements
Without UI Elements
2 iBooks screen shots demonstrating how EPUBs can be resized for the device

28. PDF Accessibility is Hard
Difficult to generate tagged PDF
Requires PDF Accessibility knowledge
No access to interaction, Math, rich graphics
Costly to remediate
No community control to “fix” the specification

29. Why Corporations Choose EPUB
Customers want mobile friendly documentation served up in the Cloud

30. Documentation Requirements
based on standards
accessible
mobile friendly & responsive
easily translated
Images depicting W3C, accessibility, various device sizes, and globalization are included.

31. Rachel Comerford
Senior Director of Content Standards and Accessibility Macmillan Learning

32. Rick Johnson
Vice President, Product Strategy VitalSource Technologies, LLC