1.
Bor n Accessible:
Making e-books fully
inclusive from day one
Carl and Ruth Shapiro Family
National Center for Accessible Media
at WGBH (NCAM)
October 19, 2012

2.
NCAM is… 2
 A research and development department within Boston
public media leader WGBH
 Involved with media and technology on all platforms,
especially digital publishing and online education
 Dedicated to leveling the playing field for people with
disabilities
 Engaged in standards, policy, research, outreach, tech
 Funded by public and private grants and Strategic
Partnerships (consulting)

3.
5
Part I:
E-books

4.
Broadly speaking… 6
 E-books can be made accessible
— but it’s more than just handing someone a talking
device
 It’s all about structure…
— navigation
> TOC, headings, tables, lists
— seeking/finding
— investigating objects
— reading order

5.
Broadly speaking… 7
 …and control
— multimedia players
— interactive objects
— the reader itself (hardware or software)

6.
What’s an accessible e-book? 8
 More than just a talking book or a talking device
 Access to structure:
— text elements (chapters, headings, paragraphs, sentences)
— images (short and long descriptions)
— data tables (header vs data cells; X/Y orientation)
— lists (number of items; nesting)
 Access to controls
— multimedia (player controls; captions; descriptions)
— interactives (controls; Flash or otherwise)
— system (menus and special features; stores; hardware)

7.
E-book devices 9
 Hardware
— Kindle
— Nook
— Sony Reader
— iPad/iPhone/iPod touch
— Android tablets/phones
— desktop/laptop computers
— others

8.
E-book devices 10
 Software
— Adobe Digital Editions (Win, Mac)
— Adobe Reader (Win, Mac, iOS, Android)
— Nook (Win, Mac, iOS, Android)
— iBooks (iPad, iPhone, iPod touch)
— Kindle (Win, Mac, iOS, Android, WinPhone,
browsers, Blackberry OS)
— Web browser
— others

9.
E-book formats 11
 E-books are available in a variety of formats
— EPUB 3
— PDF
— HTML
— AZW
— DOC
— TXT
 Not all formats provide mechanisms for delivering an
accessible e-book

10.
E-book formats 12
 There is no such thing as push-button accessibility
 Author is responsible for providing an accessible
document
— basics:
> provide a TOC and use headings
> identify/describe images
> mark up forms (e.g., tests) properly
> mark up data tables
> provide adequate contrast and clear layout
— not unlike accessible-HTML basics

11.
E-book authoring 13
 InDesign (EPUB, PDF)
 iBooks Author (EPUB 3 variant (.ibooks))
— exports books for iPad only
— accessibility guidelines coming soon
 Adobe Acrobat (PDF via source files from Word,
InDesign, OpenOffice, others)
 OpenOffice (EPUB via Writer2ePub; PDF)
 Pages (EPUB)
 Online services or converters (Calibre, Lulu, etc.)

12.
E-book accessibility: hardware 14
 Hardware accessibility varies
— controls aren’t always clearly identified
— TTS not available or may be inadequate
> TTS may only allow access to text, not to
system
> DRM may affect TTS

13.
E-book accessibility: software 15
 Software accessibility also varies
— may not be usable with screen readers
— TTS not available or may be inadequate
> may only allow access to text, not to system
> DRM may affect TTS
> may not identify elements such as images or tables
 Nook/Kindle desktop and mobile software readers not currently accessible
to screen readers
 Adobe Reader, Adobe Digital Editions are (reasonably) accessible to
screen readers
 iBooks is reasonably accessible on iOS devices
 Accessible Kindle plug-in for Windows
— requires a screen reader
— TTS reads book text; screen reader reads menus and controls

14.
16
Part II:
Digital Talking Books

15.
DAISY/DTB 17
 DAISY Consortium (Digital Accessible Information
System) promotes standards for digital talking books
(DTB)
 A DTB is a multimedia representation of a print
publication
— DTBs can contain text, text+audio, audio only
— video support in development
 DTBs can be read using dedicated hardware or
software

16.
DTB hardware readers 18

17.
DTB software readers 19
 AMIS
 AnyDaisy (older Firefox extension)
 EasyReader
 ReadHear
 others

18.
DTB general information 20
 DTB hardware readers have no visual component
 DTB software readers usually have a visual component
 DTBs are inherently accessible and are (usually) highly structured
 Multiple navigation modes
> headings
> words/sentences
> paragraphs
> chapters
> images (with descriptions)
 Depending on the DTB, these modes are all available in both text
and audio modes

19.
21
Part III:
DIAGRAM

20.
DIAGRAM
 Digital Image and Graphic Resources for Accessible
Materials
 Five-year R&D project funded by Department of
Education, Office of Special Education Programs
(OSEP)
 Began in May 2010
 Awarded to Benetech along with partners:
— NCAM
— U.S. Fund for DAISY

21.
DIAGRAM
 Access to images and graphics in educational content
through technology
 Make creating and using accessible images easier,
faster, more cost effective
— tools
— standards
— best practices and guidelines

22.
How best to describe…

23.
Poet: crowd-sourcing descriptions
 Poet is a Web-based, open-source tool for adding image
descriptions to DTBs
 For use by authors, publishers, accessibility providers
 Designed to:
– quickly identify all images in a book
– tag images needing descriptions
– author and edit descriptions
– provide guidance to describers (guidelines)
– stand-alone or integrate with content-production tools

24.
New accessible e-book reader (2013)
 Open-source Web-based e-book reader based on
Readium
— Readium is a library for rendering EPUB documents
> system for building accessible e-book readers
 Support for variable fonts, colors
 Support for text-to-speech and synchronized word-by-
word highlighting (initially only in Chrome)
 Conforms to EPUB 3
 Works in conjunction with Bookshare bookshelf

25.
Contact
Geoff Freed geoff_freed@wgbh.org
Larry Goldberg larry_goldberg@wgbh.org