Inclusive Publishing 2023 Annual Review

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Profile head shot of Richard Orme

As we head into 2024, Richard Orme, CEO of The DAISY Consortium, reflects on some of last year’s successes for accessible publishing.  

As we have continued on our accessibility journey there have been many achievements in 2023 that showcase the collective strength of all corners of the publishing ecosystem. The dedication of colleagues around the world has resulted in some excellent accomplishments and we’d like to take a moment to celebrate some of these with you. This unwavering commitment to our shared success paves the way for a bright and promising year ahead.

InclusivePublishing.org has continued to share and report on events, projects and news items as an industry hub and news portal. We have been proud to work with our members and partners on a range of projects where creativity, collaboration and determination have converged to deliver some outstanding resources, events and reports this year. 

The European Accessibility Act (EAA)

As the international publishing community prepares itself for the EAA in 2025 we have seen and taken part in many activities that will bring awareness and solutions to everyone who is involved in the provision of digital content. DAISY has continued to host the European Inclusive Publishing Forum which enables conversation and collaboration between markets, staying abreast of developments and highlighting the good work being done that others may learn from. 2024 will see a continuation of this forum’s work so that publishers worldwide may benefit from the extensive set EAA resources hosted by Inclusive Publishing.

Accessible Publishing Conference

The DAISY Consortium was extremely proud to be the co-organizer of the first Accessible Publishing Conference in the UK, alongside RNIB. Hosted at Google headquarters in London, I was proud to chair an exciting day of information sharing, networking and learning. An impressive line up of speakers gave delegates lots to take away and the Inclusive Publishing Event Overview is a useful summary of some of the highlights.

2023 Events

Inclusive Publishing has been delighted participate in many other notable events this year as well as supporting and promoting a host of others. In particular:

  • Digital Book World returned to its original location of New York in January and DAISY featured in the accessibility panel.
  • Inclusive Publishing took part in The NNELS Accessible Publishing Summit in January 2023 in Toronto which brings together communities of people to discuss and share ideas on accessible publishing via panel sessions, demonstrations and presentations, moderated group sessions and working group sessions.
  • London Book Fair in April was a busy event for us and we were excited to have so many interesting conversations about accessibility. The PAAG seminar “Accessibility: Charting the Waters” was well attended and Amnet’s discussion panel was a great success.
  • NIPI Include! in April was a wonderful opportunity to present alongside so many accessibility heavy weights.
  • Global Accessibility Awareness Day took place in May and once again we out together our publishers toolkit to encourage partners, publishers and industry bodies to promote awareness amongst colleagues.

The Launch of our Sponsorship Initiative

Our developers continue to shape and develop the free open-source tools and solutions that have become so integral to the mainstream publishing industry. These include:

We would like to invite our readers to support this work via our sponsorship initiative which will ensure that these valuable resources remain available to everyone. We welcome your support.

As we look ahead, let’s build on these successes, and embrace the opportunities that lie ahead. You can read about up to date progress in accessible publishing by signing up to the Inclusive Publishing newsletter which is published on a monthly basis and ensures that you don’t miss out on our latest news.

Here’s to another year of shared triumphs and continued growth. 

Richard Orme