Finally, Certified Accessible Educational Materials from Publishers

Charles LaPierre, M.Eng., Technical Lead, Born Accessible and DIAGRAM; Benetech

George Kerscher, Ph.D., Chief Innovations Officer, DAISY Consortium; Senior Advisor, Benetech

Finally, Certified Accessible Educational Materials from Publishers

Rachel Comerford, Director of Content Standards, Macmillan Learning

Born Accessible EPUB That Meets the Baseline for Accessibility

George Kerscher

Standards at the Core of Accessibility

● World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) – HTML 5, CSS, SVG

● Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)● WCAG 2.0 ● International Digital Publishing Forum

(IDPF)– http://www.idpf.org/– EPUB the digital publishing standard– EPUB Accessibility Conformance and

Discovery 1.0 Specification

http://www.idpf.org/

http://www.idpf.org/epub/a11y/

● For the last three years the W3C has run a Digital Publishing Interest Group

● The merger has placed EPUB under the domain of W3C

● IDPF members will be given reduced fees for two years

● 82% of members supported the combination

IDPF and W3C Merger

● Adoption of EPUB 3 has been outstanding in most digital publishing sectors

● EPUB 3.1 is an approved recommendation– http://www.idpf.org/epub/31/spec/epub-spec.html

● Included is EPUB Accessibility 1.0– http://www.idpf.org/epub/a11y/accessibility.html

● Conformance and Discovery Requirements for EPUB Publications

● First ever spec to enable accessibility certification– This establishes the baseline

● Important: We want to be practical in that publishers should readily be able to produce accessible EPUB from their normal production process

EPUB within the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

http://www.idpf.org/epub/31/spec/epub-spec.html

http://www.idpf.org/epub/a11y/accessibility.html

● Requires accessibility conformance in the EPUB publication

● Builds on WCAG 2.0 with some additional publishing-specific items

● in the USA WCAG 2.0 “AA” is generally recommended

● “conforms To” metadata pointing to “A,” “AA,” or “AAA” Accessibility metadata must be included

● Interestingly: publishers have actively participated in the EPUB Accessibility Spec development and have been updating their production process to support accessibility.

Baseline Features

● The Digital Publishing Interest Group in the W3C has produced an ARIA 1.1 module to help add some Digital Publishing semantics to ARIA

● Digital Publishing WAI-ARIA Module 1.0– https://www.w3.org/TR/dpub-aria-1.0/

● This is currently under review and has not yet been adopted as a recommendation

● Sample of the proposed new Roles:– doc-abstract– doc-appendix– doc-chapter– doc-introduction

W3C DPUB’s ARIA 1.1 Module

https://www.w3.org/TR/dpub-aria-1.0/

● All headings must be marked in the HTML as headings (Critical for navigation)

● All textual content must use HTML text markup, e.g., paragraphs, block quotes, list items

● All content must be in a logical reading order● Images are marked as decorative, described in

surrounding text or captions, or have “alt” text● If you want a fancy heading and use an image,

remember to surround the image with the heading markup and use alt text (remember you can do very cool things these days with CSS)

Concrete Examples of Some MUSTS

Metadata Requirements to Be Compliant● EPUBs wishing to be conformant MUST:

– include accessibility discovery metadata– include the following

[schema.org] accessibility metadata• accessMode • accessibilityFeature• accessibilityHazard• accessibilitySummary

● Specifications are at a high level and techniques are concrete

● WCAG and EPUB techniques are maintained independently of specifications

● As support in Reading Systems evolve, the techniques will improve

● http://www.idpf.org/epub/a11y/techniques/techniques.html

● https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20-TECHS/Overview.html

● TTS & Braille: The techniques ensures that Text-to-Speech can be used to present the information. Also, this supports text being sent to a refreshable braille display

Supporting Techniques Updated Frequently

http://www.idpf.org/epub/a11y/techniques/techniques.html




https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20-TECHS/Overview.html

https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20-TECHS/Overview.html

● Certify that digital books (and all other publications) meet the Baseline

● Self-certification – Sad Story: What happened to Voluntary Product

Accessibility Template (VPAT)?– Would you have a fox guard the henhouse?– DAISY is building the EPUB Accessibility Conformance

Checker– Auto checking must be supplemented by human

inspection

Accelerating Publisher Adoption: Certification of EPUB Publications

● Excellent accessibility metadata required to be present in the EPUB package

● Accessibility metadata supports• Born accessible• Find accessible• Buy Accessible

● Questions: Any questions on the Standards side?

Accelerating Publisher Adoption: Conformance and Certification of EPUB Publications

Benetech Certification Pilot

Charles LaPierre

Born Accessible: Certified by Benetech

● Benetech is piloting the certification process

● A documented process for certification must be established and followed

● Publisher materials are reviewed and remediated

● Long term process improvements would be recommended to publishers

Certification Metadata in EPUB Publications

● How to find certified content in the future:– certifiedBy: Specifies the name of the party

that certified the content. The certifier of the content could be the same party that created the EPUB publication, but can also be a third-party accessibility certifier.

– certifierCredential: Identifies a credential or badge that establishes the authority of the party identified in the certifiedBy property to certify content is accessible.

– certifierReport: Provides a link to an accessibility report created by the party identified in the certifiedBy property.

– conformsTo: WCAG-A, -AA, or -AAA

Tested Software for Reading EPUB

● Both the EPUB and the Reading System must be accessible.

● A perfectly accessible EPUB with a terrible Reading System does not get you there

● Likewise a great Reading System with an inaccessible EPUB yields zero

● The answer is to test Reading Systems with perfect EPUBs

● It is necessary to test using a wide range of Assistive Technologies

● http://www.epubtest.org/– Note: VitalSource Bookshelf at 100%

http://www.epubtest.org/

Buy Accessible

● Procurement MUST focus on “Buy Accessible”

● “Buy Accessible” - Demand Certified Accessible EPUB 3

● All content must be certified. Point them to “Certified by Benetech” initiative.

Role of DSS Office Supporting Born Accessible

● Guide students toward great reading systems and certified accessible content

● Support students who need more than what is in the baseline

Benetech Pilot – EPUB Accessibility Certification

● Currently working with Macmillan Learning, five other publishers, and one conversion vendor

● In depth evaluation of a sample of complex EPUB books from each

● Generate a detailed accessibility report for each title

Sample Pilot: SummaryTitle:Road Runner - Not a MythPublisher: Acme Inc.Author(s): Wiley Coyote Sr.Package Metadata (Required): FAILPage and Publication: FAILPage Navigation: PASSMedia Overlays Playback: FAILOverall 1.0 Compliant: FAILBorn Accessible Score: 25.5%Overall WCAG Compliance Reached: FAILEPUB Complexity Score: 5 - Very Complex

Sample Pilot: Born Accessible Scores

Image Accessibility: 39% WCAG FAILAudio Accessibility: 22% WCAG FAILVideo Accessibility: 0% WCAG FAILHTML Tags: 29% WCAG FAILGeneral Accessibility: 29% WCAG FAILLanguage: 50% WCAG Level-AStructured Navigation: 17% WCAG FAILLinks: 50% WCAG Level-ALists: 50% WCAG FAILTables: 0% WCAG FAILNotes: 67% WCAG Level-AJava Script: 0% WCAG FAILPackage Metadata (Optional): 0%

DPUB ARIA (Future): N/A

Born Accessible Total Score 25.5%

Accessibility Pilot Results

Publishers Perspective

● Rachel Comerford

Process is Everything

Publisher’s processes are at the heart of the Certification

How we Integrated New Standards

● Get involved in working groups – it’s a chance to share your solutions and learn from others

● Standards groups provided specifications but it was up to us to develop implementation guides based on our needs– V1 took 6 months to build– updates are coming out every 2-3 months based on

feedback● Developed a validator based on open source

resources and our implementation guide– Update with every implementation guide update

● Established a checklist for non-automated QA and educated team members on what to look for

Sharing Responsibility

● Art – Develop all art to have proper contrast, readable text

● Design – Ensure read order is clearly indicated● Authors – Provide guidance about pedagogical

intention for digital conversion● Editors – Communicate with authors about focus

and development● Compositor – Apply publisher standards, give

feedback on gaps● Quality Assurance – Automated and manual

checking of everything developed

Addressing Complexity

● Text with markup● Complex image layouts● Marginal elements

– Texts contain a large quantity of pedagogical material in the margin

● MathML– Reader compatibility is not standard– Expensive and difficult to write alt text

● ChemML– Reader compatibility is rare– Expensive and difficult to write alt text

● Graphic Novel– All image text

Why Are We Doing This?

● ‘Certified by Benetech’ advantages– 3rd party confirmation of accessibility standards– Assurance for students and adopters– Easy to roll up to administrators– Gives us feedback to pass on to vendors about the quality

of their work– Provides internal confidence about the quality of what

we’re delivering– Helps identify for schools what errors are addressed and

what warnings are relevant– Most importantly: Shows us what we’re missing and

what we have left to learn

EPUB Accessibility 1.0 (Specification)

EPUB Accessibility Techniques 1.0 (Supplemental)

WCAG 2.0 (Specification)

BISG: Quick Start Guide to Accessible Publishing

DIAGRAM Center: Image Description GuidelinesPoet Image Description Training Module

Helpful Resources for Publishers

http://www.idpf.org/epub/a11y/




https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/

http://bisg.org/news/297929/The-BISG-Quick-Start-Guide-to-Accessible-Publishing-Moving-Inclusion-Forward.htm

http://bisg.org/news/297929/The-BISG-Quick-Start-Guide-to-Accessible-Publishing-Moving-Inclusion-Forward.htm

http://diagramcenter.org/table-of-contents-2.html



http://poet.diagramcenter.org/

THANK YOU

Questions?George [email protected]

Charles [email protected]

Rachel [email protected]

mailto:[email protected]



Finally, Certified Accessible Educational Materials from Publishers

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