Inclusive Publishing 2024 Annual Review
As we head into 2025, Richard Orme, CEO of the DAISY Consortium, reflects on some of last year’s successes for accessible publishing.
We are excited to have seen so many advancements in 2024 that highlight the collective momentum of the publishing industry. DAISY is fortunate to have taken part in many of these initiatives and this overview touches briefly upon some of the year’s highlights.
Projects
It is a busy time for inclusive publishing and there are some important projects underway which we have been proud to have taken part in. These are just two of the exciting initiatives that we have been lucky enough to play a part in:
User Experience Guide for Displaying Accessibility Metadata
In 2021 the first User Experience guide for displaying accessibility metadata was created to provide a guide for transforming and displaying machine readable accessibility metadata to end users. This initiative aimed to develop a guidance document for retailers and distributors that prioritises the most important accessibility metadata for users and explains how to display it in a practical and friendly way. DAISY staff were integral to the development of this guide and to the new updated version which is now available. This timely revision will help publishers and vendors meet legislative requirements for both their new titles and their backlist.
Advancing Digital Accessibility for Scientific and Technical Publications
DAISY are proud partners of the W3C and NISO, working together to support and advance the accessibility of scientific and technical publications to people with disabilities. Recognizing that advancing accessibility is a community effort, the three organizations will bring together representatives from the publishing ecosystem to build upon work initiated in 2024 by the U.S. Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). The first public forum was held in December 2024 and we look forward to the developments that this initiative promises.
The European Accessibility Act (EAA) and Other International Legislation
EAA
As the international publishing community prepares itself for commencement of the EAA in June of this year, we have been involved in many activities that will bring awareness and solutions to those providing digital content. DAISY has continued to host the European Inclusive Publishing Forum which fosters conversation and collaboration between stakeholders, staying abreast of developments and highlighting the excellent work being done that others may learn from. To complement this work, DAISY hosts a monthly Countdown to the EAA webinar series which has been hugely successful and has helped to keep the momentum going as everyone readies themselves for this important legislation. The extensive set of EAA resources hosted by Inclusive Publishing has provided a hub of information which continues to grow.
ADA Title II Legislation
DAISY keeps track of legislation and regulations worldwide and we have been closely following the Americans with Disabilities Act Title II ruling which will affect many publishing organizations globally. If publishers are unsure of how this affects them, our introductory work will be of interest.
2024 Events
As ever, Inclusive Publishing has been active at many notable events this year as well as supporting and promoting a host of others. In particular:
DAISY Webinar Series
Our webinar series counting down to the implementation of the European Accessibility Act continues to share valuable information with the publishing community. Full recordings, summary notes, transcripts and related links for our latest webinars are available as well as details of the upcoming webinars as we draw closer to June 2025.
NNELS Accessible Publishing Summit 2024
Inclusive Publishing took part in the annual NNELS event in January 2024 in Toronto which brought 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.
CSUN 2024
The CSUN Assistive Technology conference is one of the largest annual accessibility events, drawing an international audience and highlighting the latest developments from across the field. There were many sessions relevant to accessible reading and education, and the DAISY team were involved throughout the conference.
Digital Publishing Summit 2024
This year’s DPUB Summit, hosted by EDRLab, had a strong accessibility focus and this was particularly the case for the opening keynote, given by DAISY’s George Kerscher.
PAAGCon 2024
The UK’s Publishing Accessibility Action Group held its first conference and members of the DAISY team were proud to contribute to the planning, organizations, and sessions at the conference itself.
Frankfurt Book Fair 2024
Frankfurt Book Fair had several events dedicated to accessibility this year and DAISY was pleased to take part in many of them. With panel discussions on ongoing projects, awareness events and technical sessions, this event was packed full of accessibility updates.
IPP and Sponsorship
This past year we have been delighted to welcome Taylor and Francis, Amazon, and Cactus to our Inclusive Publishing Partner program. If you or your organization are interested in joining this initiative, we would be pleased to hear from you during what we anticipate will be a particularly busy time for accessible publishing. Our impressive list of current partners includes Google, Adobe, Microsoft, and many others.
Our sponsorship program also continues apace and as maintenance and improvements are made to our suite of tools, your support is more important than ever. If you rely on DAISY solutions as part of your mainstream workflow, then we hope you will support this ongoing work.
There is much to look forward to this year and you can read about all our progress by signing up to the Inclusive Publishing newsletter, which is published monthly.
Our absolute best wishes to all our readers,
Richard Orme
