DAISY Consortium’s Voluntary Commitments to Improve the Digital Accessibility of Scientific and Technical Publications

DAISY Consortium logo

Introduction

People with print disabilities are excluded when scientific and technical information is published in a way that doesn’t work for them. The DAISY Consortium is the not-for-profit global authority on publishing and reading for people with blindness, low vision, and other print disabilities. Our members around the world have decades of experience producing accessible publications, including complex materials. Our expert team develops standards, tools and best practices that are embraced by leading publishers, library services and technology companies.

DAISY Consortium is committed to advancing the accessibility of scientific and technical publications for people with disabilities and in 2025 will help drive progress together with our longstanding partners W3C and NISO. DAISY was one of the founding members of the Web Accessibility Initiative, helping to write the specifications for accessible web technologies. DAISY staff and member organizations are active participants in Publishing@W3C groups and DAISY is also an enthusiastic NISO member. DAISY format specifications have been a NISO standard for two decades and our experts participate in NISO working groups.

DAISY’s Commitments to improve the accessibility of Digital Accessibility of Scientific and Technical Publications

The following commitments are in our operational plan for 2025 which was approved by the DAISY Board in November 2024:

  1. DAISY is a leader in developing specifications and best practices for accessible publishing. Our initiatives include the Inclusive Publishing Hub, Accessibility Checker for EPUB, SMART accessibility reporting tool and the Accessible Publishing Knowledge Base. In 2025 we will revise and update the Best Practices for Authoring MathML in EPUB and Best Practices for Authoring Extended Descriptions in EPUB.
  2. DAISY Consortium leads the accessibility testing of ebook readers. In 2025 we will engage with developers to improve assistive technology users’ experience by testing combinations of reading systems and assistive technology for features essential to science and technical publications, such as navigation, math, chemistry and extended descriptions.
  3. To promote awareness and advance training, we will develop and deploy a free DAISY Learning course on producing accessible scientific and technical documents. Whilst this practical course will be informative to anyone creating publications, it will be especially useful for resource centers in schools and colleges, self-publishing authors and smaller publishers.
  4. The open-source, cross-platform MathCAT library enables screen readers and other assistive technology to produce speech and braille from MathML, and DAISY has been proud to participate in its development. Through 2025 DAISY members will contribute more braille and speech localizations to extend accessible math in more languages, and DAISY Friends will begin to explore support for multiline braille displays such as Monarch, Dot Pad and Canute.
  5. DAISY Consortium experts and members will provide technical assistance to Adobe to improve the export of accessible math from InDesign.
  6. DAISY Consortium experts and members will provide technical assistance to Microsoft to improve the screen reader experience when reading and writing math in Word.
  7. We will reach out to Apple to discuss enhancements to the screen reader and read aloud experiences of MathML on iOS, iPadOS and macOS.
  8. We will continue our dialog with Google to improve the screen reader experience and read aloud experiences of MathML on Android and ChromeOS.
  9. DAISY Consortium members are developing a specification for next generation digital braille. In 2025 we will publish the first version of this standard, bringing powerful navigation, international compatibility, and support for tactile graphics for the first time.
  10. Artificial Intelligence offers great potential to enhance access to scientific and technical publications. In 2025 we will track emerging technologies, especially in relation to new techniques for describing complex images and improved efficiencies in the production of tactile graphics.

DAISY Consortium  will report on the progress of these commitments at the end of 2025. We are grateful to all our Members, Inclusive Publishing Partners and Sponsors who provide essential financial support to forge ahead in this important work