Tag Archive for: A11y

The Big 5 US Higher Ed Publishers are Going All-In on Accessibility

Published at November 24, 2018/in Articles /by Sarah Hilderley

I had the pleasure of organizing a session at the 21st Accessing Higher Ground conference in Denver in mid-November—a conference that is attended by a lot of folks from Disability Services Offices (DSOs) from across the US—to help those folks realize how much the big higher education publishers are doing to make their resources accessible, with a focus on accessible EPUBs.

“Born Accessible” is getting closer to the new normal!

The publishers on my panel were from Cengage, Macmillan Learning, McGraw-Hill Education, Pearson and Wiley, and they all had compelling stories to tell. While I don’t have space here to get into everything they had to say (the consolidated presentation is available here), the message was clear: they are not just working hard on accessibility, they’re getting it done. All of them are producing new resources as accessible EPUBs that align with the EPUB Accessibility 1.0 specification.

That means alt text—good alt text, done with an understanding of the nuances required to get it right—and in many cases extended descriptions of complex graphics as well. All of them are ensuring proper structuring and navigation. For resources that include media, most are providing closed captioning and transcripts. And those with math are providing MathML. They’re even working hard to get their tables right!

But it’s more than just the products themselves. The corporate cultures need to be accessibility aware. Cengage, for example, is putting a major focus on Universal Design for Learning (UDL), including a significant staffing commitment: a Director of Universal Design and Accessible Technologies is already on board, and an Accessibility/UDL Specialist and an Accessibility/UDL Coordinator are soon to be named.

Macmillan Learning’s presentation was all about the people and the processes, with a realization that just providing specs and expecting vendors to get it right is not sufficient. They have established a wealth of initiatives to foster knowledge of accessibility throughout their organization, with training and workshops that include vendors, creating a judgment free space to encourage motivation, participating in industry events and organizations, building a testing center in-house, and establishing an Advisory Board and Student Focus Groups to involve their constituents.

McGraw-Hill provided an in-depth look at the specifics, detailing both alternative text and extended descriptions not just for alignment but as captions and transcripts for audio and video content, enforcing contrast specs in their designs, use of MathML, using language tags at the page and phrase levels, and even tackling proper structuring of tables.

Pearson stressed their end-to-end commitment to accessibility for both their content and platforms, all based on WCAG 2.0 AA conformance and alignment with EPUB Accessibility 1.0. They are putting a special priority on making these accessible resources easy for students to obtain and use, through initiatives like their partnership with VitalSource to establish the Pearson Accessibility Store, all resources of which are guaranteed to be accessible, and partnerships with Kurzweil and T-Base to integrate well with those key technologies.

Wiley is doing all these good things too. (They came last due to alphabetical order.) They are addressing accessibility not just for going-forward content, but for legacy content as well, and expanding into other business areas outside of higher ed. Because of the diversity and technical nature of much of their content, they are working on discipline-specific alt text guidelines. And like several of the other speakers, they mentioned that they are working with Benetech on their Global Certified Accessible program, expecting to be certified this summer.

The message was clear: these folks are working hard on accessibility, and many of their products and platforms are much more accessible than students and DSOs realize. They’re doing this by aligning with standards and taking advantage of the right resources, like Ace by DAISY and the Accessible Publishing Knowledge Base. “Born Accessible” is getting closer to the new normal!

This event report was kindly submitted by Bill Kasdorf, Principal, Kasdorf & Associates

Call for Nominations: Accessible Books Consortium International Excellence Award 2019

Published at November 21, 2018/in News /by Sarah Hilderley

ABC is now inviting nominations for the 2019 Accessible Books Consortium International Excellence Award for Accessible Publishing. This award recognizes outstanding leadership and achievements in advancing the accessibility of commercial ebooks or other digital publications for persons who are print disabled. Two awards will be presented, one to a publisher and one for an initiative.

You may nominate either your own organization/company or a third party anywhere in the world, and ABC encourages nominations of companies, organizations or individuals based in developing or least developed countries. The two awardees will be presented with trophies at the annual awards event held at the London Book Fair on Tuesday, March 12, 2019.

Please submit your application by Thursday, January 10, 2019 through the London Book Fair site.

CSUN Assistive Technology Conference, 2019

March 11th to 15th, 2019

Published at November 20, 2018/in Upcoming events /by Sarah Hilderley

The CSUN Assistive Technology Conference will be held in March this year and it promises to be as exceptional as ever. More than 5,000 people gathered last year to explore new technologies designed to assist people with disabilities. Registration begins on January 8, 2019 and of particular interest to inclusive publishing readers are the following sessions:

Accessibility Initiatives and Commitments from Major Higher Ed Publishers—March 13, 10.00am
EPUB 101: Essential briefing for all higher education professionals—March 14, 2.20pm
Using Microsoft Word to author accessible EPUB 3 publications—March 14, 3.20pm
Telling Images: The FOCUS/LOCUS Method for Accessible Image Description—March 14, 3.20pm

Date

March 11-15, 2019

Venue

Anaheim, California

Learn More

For further information and registration details visit the CSUN Conference website or review the complete list of sessions.

ebookcraft 2019

March 18th to 19th, 2019

Published at November 19, 2018/in Upcoming events /by Sarah Hilderley

ebookcraft is a two-day conference dedicated to ebook production—if you’re looking for a mix of practical tips and forward-thinking inspiration, you won’t want to miss it.The main conference day for ebookcraft 2019 will be held on Tuesday, March 19 with workshops on Monday, March 18. for the #eprdctn crowd for whom this conference is designed.

Early bird pricing is available until January 25, 2019 and newsletter updates are also available. Check back here for program highlights for the inclusive publishing community, as they are released by the organizers.

Date

March 18-19, 2019

Venue

Toronto, Canada

Learn More

To access registration and conference details visit the ebookcraft website.

Assistive Technology Industry Association Conference 2019

January 29th to 30th, 2019

Published at November 19, 2018/in Upcoming events /by Sarah Hilderley

The ATIA conference is an extensive assistive technology conference showcasing international excellence in the field. With 350+ sessions covering 10 topic strands the program is varied and exciting.

Date

Jan 29-30, 2019

Venue

Orlando, Florida

Learn More

Registration and conference details are available at the ATIA website

World-Leading Book Accessibility Initiative Creating the Dignity to Read

Published at November 8, 2018/in Articles /by Sarah Hilderley

Thirty individuals from more than 20 organizations met last week at Barangaroo for the third forum of the Australian Inclusive Publishing Initiative (AIPI) which is uniquely comprised of representatives from the ecosystem that makes books accessible to people with print disabilities, including libraries, publishers, authors, editors, print disability peak bodies, copyright experts, and government agencies.

Reflecting on two years of work since the first Marrakesh Treaty Forum, the AIPI mapped the next steps towards an accessible future of creating books to ensure all people, regardless of ability, have the dignity to read.

The AIPI was created in 2016 to address concerns that people are missing out on the joy and learning experience of reading books. It can take up to a year to convert a traditional book into a version that is suitable for someone with vision impairment or a print disability.

International book accessibility expert, Bill Kasdorf, opened the AIPI forum via web cast, commenting that the collaborative efforts of the Australian cohort is world-leading and inspirational. “There are other publishing industry groups across the globe that are further ahead in terms of technology, but the wide group of stakeholders AIPI has is actually world-leading, innovative and will ensure sustainability of outcomes,” Kasdorf said.

Josie Howse, a world authority on braille and large print services from the NSW Department of Education, has “never been so excited” by the developments in the print disability space. “In more than 30 years that I have been working on copyright access to files for people with vision impairment, this is the most exciting time I’ve experienced. The progress and stimulation felt with our third AIPI get-together is significant.”

Historically, print accessibility groups have come together but never with as many organizations under the one banner. “There was a round table for print disability in 1988 and an annual meeting since,” Ms Howse continued, “but the dynamics of now, largely due to the driving force of the Australian Publishing Association, is what’s making the difference.”

The fact we’ve progressed so much in a year, and we have achievable targets involving the widest group of stakeholders from publishing and the disability advocacy space, demonstrates the great momentum and opportunity we currently have.

Sonali Marathe from the Royal Institute for Blind and Deaf Children says this momentum through collaboration wasn’t always the case, “Two years ago, there was a divide between publishers and the print disability sector, but now we are a cohesive group. It’s a game-changer for the goal of creating book formats for all abilities to read and enjoy. The needs of people with a print disability is more widespread than some might think. Data from The Australian Bureau of Statistics highlights that there are one in five people in the community living with a permanent disability. Furthermore, more than 20% of these have some form of print disability which inhibits their experience of a standard print book. This initiative will enable so many more people to read for purpose and enjoyment.”

The AIPI working meeting ,with representatives from both sides, has resulted in a strong set of goals for 2019. Jess Coates from the Australian Digital Alliance said, “This year was particularly productive and has built nicely on previous years. The first year was big and I think we felt trepidation in what we were trying to achieve. The second year we had a lot of enthusiasm as a group and in 2018, we’ve been able to see outcomes. After the meeting today, you can say that things are really happening.One key task the group will work on,” Ms Coates says, “will be to create a digital knowledge hub. People have been asking what AIPI is doing and when this web platform is complete we will have a space to showcase what the group and industry has done. We will be able to share information about the regulatory framework publishers need to work within, guidelines for publishers and disability services personnel, and also conversations from the global context about developments in the inclusion and book accessibility milieu.”

The overarching challenge that the AIPI is working towards is called born-accessible publishing. This is where a master file holds the content of the book, which can then be exported into any format required: braille, audiobook, large font and more. It’s a process that requires new workflows for publishers, but one that has been piloted successfully by Sydney University Press (SUP). AIPI member and SUP Publishing Manager, Agata Mrva-Montoya, has shared her experience of creating born-accessible files through EPUB. One of the most time-consuming aspects of making a book’s content accessible is in describing images through what is called alt-text. “The alt-text of images in our workflow now goes to authors. They are best placed to provide content to describe any images in their books, so we get authors to write the alt-text and then we simply copy it in. It saves a lot of time and ends up being better content,”

Changes to the regulatory framework in which publishers operate are accelerating the need to find solutions. Since 2010, if a publisher has created a book that is not available in formats that consumers require, they are potentially in breach of the Disability Discrimination Act 2005. Lee Walker, President of the Australian Publishers Association and Director of School Publishing at Oxford University Press, says that besides the inherent desire to help more people to read books, “The changes in the legal space are key drivers for publishers to consider how to meet the problem of changing workflows. We want to create texts in various formats with ease—while safeguarding copyright for authors and publishers in the process.The print disabled community is quite vast. When you consider the ageing population, people with degenerative muscle disorders who can’t hold books, people with dyslexia—the market of people requiring books in non-traditional formats is not as narrow as one might first imagine.”

Greg Alchin, a member of AIPI from All Equal, explains the situation the book industry is in: “The book industry has a simple choice. They can either embrace publishing digital books to international accessibility standards or not. Accessible standards and modern formats such as EPUB enable publishers to reach a greater market, maintain better copyright control and diminish legal risks. Conversely publishers who choose to produce electronic books in outdated formats such as PDF fail to comply with accessibility standards and put themselves at great risk of lawsuits for not providing equal access. It’s like airbags with the car industry. By choosing to incorporate substandard airbags it has opened the industry to compensation lawsuits as well as the costly task of retrofitting better quality airbags in. The publishing sector stands to find itself in legal trouble if they don’t make changes soon. On a positive note, Australian publishers are making efforts to make their books more widely accessible and the AIPI group is working together to ensure their changes are fit for purpose,”.

The ultimate goal of AIPI is to make it as easy as possible for publishers to produce born-accessible content to the benefit of all readers. The AIPI group will continue to work towards a number of identified projects across the year. Further updates will be published on the APA News and the, soon to be developed, AIPI Knowledge Hub.

Inclusive Publishing will update its readers on AIPI’s progress and the projects that are identified for the future year.

This report was kindly submitted by The Australian Publishers Association. All images have been supplied courtesy of the Australian Publishers Association

The Journey Towards Dyslexia-Friendly, Digital Publishing

Published at October 2, 2018/in Articles /by Sarah Hilderley

During 2018 Dyslexia Awareness Week, Abi James, Chair of the British Dyslexia Association New Technologies Committee, looks back at how dyslexia-friendly practices have evolved and how the latest accessibility standards and inclusive practices can help publishers produce materials that are suitable for everyone.

Dyslexia affects approximately 10% of the population and, of those individuals, 4% severely. It is a life-long condition and studies have shown it has a neurological basis, often running in families. Dyslexia is one of several Cognitive Disabilities that are hidden from view but, through their impact on processing, attention and recall, can significantly affect the effort, efficacy and enjoyment of printed text. Technology has increasing been used to help overcome the difficulties associated with dyslexia.

The British Dyslexia Association (BDA) New Technologies Committee has been providing free advice on assistive technology for over 20 years. Popular tools include those that support the composition of text, such as word processors, spell checkers and speech recognition; or assistive technologies such as text to speech and other customised tools to aid reading. However, while technology has evolved significantly in that time, the most popular articles are still those about fonts and layouts for making accessible documents.

In 2003, as word processing became a common tool, the BDA developed a Style Guide to promote dyslexia-friendly publishing practices. The style guide called for a minimum font size, the use of clear font styles and consideration of how glare and colour combinations can have an impact on some readers. The BDA Style Guide remains one of the core references for those interested in inclusive publishing practices and is frequently cited in academic studies.

In the decade that followed the publication of the Style Guide, interest from typographers also grew with the creation of several dyslexia-specific fonts (i). These fonts attempted to aid dyslexic readers by making letter sizes more consistent and recognisable. Some of these fonts have been included in mainstream ebook tools, including the OpenDyslexic font which comes with some Kindle devices. This in turn has led to an increased interest from researchers about how fonts and colours affect some dyslexic readers. Studies such as Rello and Baeza-Yates’ Good Fonts for Dyslexia have failed to identify the benefits of dyslexia-specific fonts, although they have continued to highlight the impact that fonts and typography have on reading skills.

This work has led to the BDA once more revisiting the style guide, to update it not only to include the latest research, but also to take account of the latest technologies and publishing practices. The 2018 BDA Style Guide highlights several important findings from recent studies including:

Font size matters; larger fonts improve readability.
Letter spacing can have as big an impact on readability as the font style. Fonts where letters have a more equal spacing are easier for dyslexic readers.
Word and line spacing also influence readability for those with dyslexia. Line-spacing of at least 1.5 lines can be beneficial, although if the line spacing is too large, the benefits are removed.
Shorter lines or reading on small screens can help some dyslexic readers.

How can these Recommendations be Built into Digital Publications and Ebook Devices?

The increase in the availability and use of e-books, as well as the all-pervasive nature of smart devices has meant that dyslexic children and adults have a greater opportunity to make use of assistive tools when reading text. Ebooks can bring many hidden accessibility wins and the publishing community, through initiatives such as epubtest.org are working towards making ebooks more accessible to all users. Being able to change the font style, the background colour and/or hear content read aloud can make a difference. However, the options to allow users to personalise all their ebooks frequently remains unavailable or are limited to basic font size changes.

This may be due in part because accessibility standards have tended to focus on supporting the needs of those who face sensory and/or physical barriers. The primary web accessibility standard, WCAG2.0, which forms part of accessibility legislation in many countries, had minimal guidelines on personalisation. Earlier this year an update of the Web Accessibility Content Guidelines (v2.1) was released with several new guidelines aimed at supporting the needs of those with cognitive disabilities as well as the use of new technologies such as touch screens. Guidelines related to reflow (1.4.10) and text spacing (1.4.12) will be particularly useful for encouraging dyslexia-friendly text, although additional dyslexia friendly approaches remain unspecified.

One area that still needs to be addressed by accessibility guidelines is background colour. Colour choice is felt to be a design issue and so guidelines only consider barriers that may arise due to insufficient contrast or certain colour combinations. While the impact of coloured filters and lenses remains controversial to remediate dyslexia, the negative impact of glare on readability has been recognised for nearly a century (ii). Recent studies have shown that dyslexic readers prefer coloured backgrounds that reduce glare although some also prefer back on white rather than unfamiliar colour combinations, which can be distracting. The BDA style guide continues to recommend that alternative background colours should be considered to reduce glare.

Even when an ebook publisher or platform offers many accessibility options, it can be difficult for readers to identify if the platform will meet their needs. In particular, dyslexic readers who wish to listen to text find their assistive technology does not work as the tools tend to rely on accessing the clipboard, while built-in accessibility modes can present ebook content as pure text, removing the formatting and visual structure clues that dyslexic readers rely on. A recent audit of ebook accessibility by university library staff highlighted how difficult it was for students to know if ebooks and digital resources were accessible for their needs. There were no clues in the ebook description or by the download as to whether text to speech or other personalisation options would work.

One initiative, which may bring real change to the sector, includes recent legislation that applies across Europe to ensure that public sector websites, digital resources and mobile apps meet accessibility standards (iii). This will require organisations such as public libraries, universities and local government to confirm that content they publish on their websites, even if sourced from a third-party supplier, meets accessibility standards. These organisations will be required to publish an accessibility statement outlining how the digital sites and resources meet the European accessibility standard EN 301 549 (which is aligned to WCAG 2.1).

What Does This Mean for the Publishing Community?

As these new regulations come into force, accessibility could become an increasingly important factor in procurement decisions as public sector organisations look to minimise their accessibility issues. Understanding accessibility and personalisation requirements could put you ahead in business decisions, as well as providing a better experience for your readers. But remember, creating accessible and inclusive publications is not just about meeting technical standards. It is about understanding the needs of people with different strengths and weaknesses and how they might overcome digital barriers as well as understanding how personal preferences and choices combine. At the University of Southampton, we provide the opportunity for anyone to learn more about digital accessibility and its impact through our free FutureLearn Digital Accessibility MOOC (Massive Open Online Course). This course will be running from early October 2018, so why not encourage colleagues to sign-up now.

Abi James is the Chair of the British Dyslexia Association New Technologies Committee and a digital accessibility researcher at the University of Southampton.

Footnotes

i Dyslexia fonts include Sylexiad, Dyslexie , Read Regular and OpenDyslexic.

ii Goldsberry reported to negative impact of white and shiny paper in Goldsberry, L. D. (1921). Eyesight and paper glare. The Elementary School Journal, 21(10), 782-785.

iii Countries within the EU have been required to implement the EU directive on the accessibility of the websites and mobile applications of public sector bodies by September 2018

EPUBCheck Development Update

Published at September 27, 2018/in News /by Sarah Hilderley

EPUBCheck plays a significant role within the ebook production process, checking EPUB files against the specification to ensure they validate. As the EPUB specification has evolved over time it is important that the tools we use to create and validate EPUB files are kept up to date. Many retailers require EPUB files to have been validated by EPUBCheck. However, in its current state, EPUBCheck cannot properly validate many EPUBs that meet the most up to date standards.

To address this the Publishing Business Group at W3C put out a request for proposals to update EPUBCheck, and following a competitive selection process the DAISY Consortium has been selected to perform the update to:

Bring EPUBCheck in sync with the dynamically evolving core web specs of HTML, CSS, and SVG and also with the current version of EPUB 3
Fully support the EPUB Accessibility Guidelines, making sure that your products are usable for everyone
Add new features, such as HTML validation (in coordination with the W3C validation services) and a better check of media overlays
Offer better service to the publishing industry with a faster response to bug reports and feature request.

This work is being funded through donations from organizations which use the EPUBCheck tool, and while there are different sponsorship levels, any amount of donation is welcome to help support this effort to update and overhaul EPUBCheck. Full details are available at the Publishing@W3C fundraising page.

We look forward to bringing you updates as this exciting work evolves.

Inspiring Words from Industry Leaders: Interview with Cristina Mussinelli, The LIA Foundation

Published at September 24, 2018/in Articles /by Sarah Hilderley

Inclusive Publishing has embarked on a series of interviews with industry leaders and their approach to accessibility. Cristina Mussinelli has championed inclusive publishing throughout much of her career and the work of the LIA Foundation has radically changed the way that mainstream accessibility is approached by publishers in Italy and abroad.

Producing accessible files means producing well-structured, high-quality publications that any reader can enjoy.

Please share with us the major achievements of the LIA Foundation to date

Firstly, we are very proud of the LIA catalogue which now hosts over 20.000 born accessible e-books produced by 73 Italian publishing imprints using mainstream production process and which are also distributed in the most important online retail outlets. Our hope is to add more and more publishers to this continually growing list so that we can, in the near future, offer print impaired people a complete catalogue of all new ebooks published in the Italian trade market.

In November 2017 we reached a great milestone. After many years of fruitful collaboration, Fondazione LIA – Libri Italiani Accessibili and the Italian Blind and Partially Sighted Union decided to strengthen their partnership with UICI becoming an institutional participant and electing the UICI president as the Fondazione LIA president. This collaboration confirms that if the publishing world and the organizations representing people with visual impairments work closely together, actions, projects and outcomes can be incredibly fruitful and effective.

Last, but not least, we are witnessing a growing interest towards accessibility from content producers, software houses and many others who are involved in the book supply chain. We will be working with them to make sure that accessibility is central in everyone’s publishing strategy.

Can you sum up the Foundation’s attitude towards inclusive publishing in one sentence.

I would like my catalogue to be everybody’s catalogue. I’d like to be able to choose just like everybody. I don’t want to be limited to specially made books but to be free to read like anybody else.

Mario Barbuto, President of the Italian Blind Union and now also of Fondazione LIA.

How has the work of the LIA Foundation affected the accessibility of mainstream publishing in Italy?

LIA has created an innovative service increasing the availability of mainstream accessible fiction and nonfiction titles in digital format (e-books) for blind and visually impaired readers.

To reach this target, LIA put in place true cultural change in the way accessibility is approached by Italian publishers. Accessibility is now considered integral to publishing production processes and is no longer thought of as an add-on feature. The LIA project has resulted in the production of accessible mainstream files with appropriate metadata attached being much higher on the agenda for publishers.

LIA has been a true revolution for more than 362,000 blind and 1,5 million visually impaired Italians who proved to be strong readers according to a 2011 survey carried out by LIA prior to the implementation of its mainstream accessibility model. Reading an average of 9 books every year, visually impaired readers consume three times more titles than the average domestic reader.

Do you have a top tip for publishers who are new to accessibility?

Just to not be afraid and to start the journey towards accessibility. Changing workflows and production habits, even slightly, can produce astonishing results. It is also worth mentioning that accessibility means quality. Producing accessible files means producing well-structured, high-quality publications that any reader can enjoy. The real question is: why a publisher shouldn’t produce accessible files? Why would they not take advantage of the potential on offer from accessible content?

The LIA Foundation is focusing heavily on training at the moment – how will this complement the work that the project has already completed?

As the first LIA project completed it was clear that our team had developed a particular and very specialised know-how about accessible digital publishing, assistive technologies and everything in between. As many companies and institutions publish corporate documents, we decided to address their need to provide this content to blind and partially sighted users. The publishing world has been and will always be our core focus but we think that every content provider should embrace accessibility.

The goal of LIA is to promote access for visually impaired readers to editorial products from traditional publishers as well as content providers in general, thus allowing them to choose how, when and, above all, what to read.

Nowadays we offer tailor made training and consultancy services to publishing houses, public and private companies, in Italy and abroad, who are interested in producing accessible content. We provide assesments on current publications, we offer training courses based on their actual workflows and production tools and we provide guidance and help-desk responses in the follow-up phase. For instance – we will soon start an ad hoc training program for the Banca d’Italia, the central bank of the Republic of Italy and we are also organizing an in-house training course for Italian publishers specializing in medical publications so that they can create “born accessible” publications and set up an accessible reading platform.

What do you think will be the biggest game changer for inclusive publishing in the next few years?
The Marrakesh Treaty and the European Accessibility Act will foster the adoption of inclusive publishing strategies for sure. The move from EPUB 2 to EPUB 3 will also be pivotal. Why not move now?

What is on the events calendar for the LIA Foundation over the next year?

Next year is going to be a fun one. We are planning a calendar of events for all the members of the book supply chain, starting from the reader. Through a project funded by Fondazione Cariplo, we’ll organize training courses for blind and visually impaired readers about accessibile digital publishing.

We are also organizing an Accessibility Camp, in Milan, in the spring for publishers, developers and print impaired readers where to share best practice and define common strategies and projects to implement.

overhead shot of a reading in the dark event with readers on stage and a large audience able to listen and watch via a screen.

Throughout the year we are planning to organize some highly engaging Reading in the Dark events as well, through which Fondazione LIA make participants aware of issues such as accessibility and the socio-cultural inclusion of people with visual impairments. During a reading in the dark the author reads a passage from the book and the blind reader continues reading with the e-book in the LIA Foundation catalog through different modes: magnifying the characters, using the Braille display or the text to speech functionality of tablets and smartphones. Antonio Manzini, author of Orfani Bianchi had this to say about Reading in the Dark:

I’ve been to the Lia Foundation Reading in the Dark. There were two boys reading. Their voices resounded in that huge room and gave life to the characters, the dialogues, the descriptions. We were able to see trenches, Africa, we saw the music and jealousy and a single Romanian carer in a ruthless Rome. They read as Gods, and they did it with the soul and with the hands, because those two boys did not see. And they gave us a breathtaking view.

Details of all of these events will be available via Inclusive Publishing.

The Importance of Text Accessibility: What We May Have Forgotten

Published at September 14, 2018/in Articles /by Sarah Hilderley

This article was kindly submitted by Jonathan Hassell, CEO of Hassell Inclusion

If you care about being thought credible and intelligent, do not use complex language where simpler language can do.

Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast & Slow (winner of the Nobel Prize)

Back in 2001, when I first started working in accessibility at the BBC, one of the key things we thought about was the aim to make text as simple as possible. Using Plain Language. Writing designed to ensure the reader understands as quickly, easily and completely as possible. In the Accessibility Guidelines at the time, WCAG 1.0, this was a single-A requirement, recognising it as one of the most important aspects of accessibility. Accessibility experts and readers agreed that how we used words was massively important.

The challenge then was how we could make sure that our online educational content and content written for audiences with their own slang was available in simpler language. How do you do Shakespeare in Plain Language? How do you do Black Urban Culture in Plain language? And would either of those make sense for the many people who need online text to be altered to fit their accessibility needs.

How we forgot about the importance of text accessibility

Fast forwards to 2009, when WCAG 2.0 replaced 1.0, and a curious thing happened. The importance of making web sites understandable through Plain Language dropped from level A to level AAA. For those of you who aren’t in the know, A is what everyone feels like they have to do, AAA is what everyone forgets.

The authors of WCAG 2.0 did this because they could not find a way to objectively test whether a page uses the clearest and simplest language. However, in making the change, the Guidelines effectively said that making sure people could understand the words was less important than making sure screen readers could pronounce those words correctly. Which, when you think about it, doesn’t make much sense. There were some voices of concern, but they were quickly forgotten.

Fast forwards again to July 2018, in London, where I’d been invited to speak on accessibility at the Copy Forum of one of our clients. I had the chance to see what WCAG’s decision had done to the relationship between content authors and accessibility experts. Due to that decision in WCAG 2.0, you don’t often hear people talking about the accessibility of text content. The huge communities of content marketers and copywriters, of people who craft words rather than images or code, have been completely forgotten by the accessibility world.

Remembering the importance of text accessibility

At the Copy Forum, they’d invited me to tell them what they could learn from accessibility. I was there to tell them that there was a lot that accessibility could re-learn from them. I said this because, if you look at WCAG 2.0, you’d be forgiven for thinking that words don’t matter. That’s a real problem, as a large part digital content is text. And lots of groups of people with impairments really benefit from text accessibility:

People who are blind, want text to be as short as possible and structured well
People whose first language is not the native language (including sign language users), want text to use the simplest language
People with learning difficulties, want text to be as simple as possible
People with ADHD, want text to be as brief as possible, in bulleted lists

The good news is that WCAG may now be revisiting its 2009 decision, as the accessibility of text is likely to be addressed by its new Cognitive and Learning Disabilities Accessibility Task Force. You can take part in the Task Force if this is a topic that means a lot to you.

What is important about the accessibility of words?

There are a few basic rules that are worth remembering:

Simplify – replace complex words with simpler ones
Summarize – cut out the ‘unnecessary’ content
Show topics – pull out topics in the text with links to additional information
Show definitions – include definitions for difficult words
AAC symbols – add symbols to help people who use them for literacy support

With great advances in Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence it is possible to get a computer to make a passage of text shorter or simpler. But managing to do this and not lose inherent meaning is very difficult indeed. Generating automatic summaries of text can be very unreliable particularly with the sorts of text people really need to be simpler, such as financial terms and conditions. This will, undoubtedly, improve with time and there are various tools available now that are making terrific headway with this, such as IBM’s Content Clarifier. In the meantime, using tools like the Hemingway app to advise you on which aspects of your documents you could make simpler can help you improve their accessibility.

So why should we care?

In a nutshell, the benefits of simple text can be huge. W3C’s main case study for the benefits of accessibility is for Legal & General. Often we forget this study comes from 2005, when the Guidelines used were WCAG 1.0, with its emphasis on Plain Language. Fortune Cookie’s site and information redesign strategy for Legal & General certainly addressed the needs of “3.2m Britons (who) have difficulty using inaccessible websites”. But it also focused on customers of whom “6m have dyslexia; 1 in 3 is aged 50+; 3m speak English as a second language; 1.5m lack basic language skills; and 5.2m adults have sub-GCSE level English”. The results were these: “Conversion rates on every online product improved substantially, ranging between 26% and an incredible 200%”.

If you turn complex language into Plain Language, you can sell a lot more products because people can now understand them. Which is exactly what Daniel Kahneman was saying, all those years ago. Simpler means more credible, as well as more accessible. There’s a prize to be won here.

Hassell Inclusion is an inclusion and accessibility consultancy founded and directed by accessibility expert Professor Jonathan Hassell. Jonathan has over 16 years experience in identifying new directions and challenges in digital accessibility, finding best practice process and technology solutions to these challenges, authoring international standards and presenting best practices to conference audiences across the world.

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