Tag Archive for: accessibility

Canadian Budget Announces Major Focus on Accessible Publishing

The 2019 Canadian budget has a strong focus on the “inclusion of Canadians with visual impairments and other print disabilities.” An exciting funding program has been announced:

  • To address this challenge, Budget 2019 proposes to provide the Centre for Equitable Library Access with an investment of $3.0 million in 2019–20 to produce new accessible reading materials that will be available through public libraries across Canada.

  • The Government is also committed to putting in place a strategy that will ensure the sustainable production and distribution of accessible reading material over the longer term. To that end, Budget 2019 proposes to invest $22.8 million over five years, starting in 2019–20, to assist Canada’s independent book publishing industry in increasing their production of accessible books for persons with print disabilities.

  • To improve employment opportunities for persons with visual impairments, Budget 2019 proposes to provide $1.0 million, in 2019–20, to the Canadian National Institute for the Blind to connect persons with visual impairments to small and medium-sized employers.

  • To support the independence of persons with disabilities, Budget 2019 also proposes to invest $0.5 million in 2019–20 towards finding ways to improve the accessibility of electronic payment terminals to enable persons with disabilities to conduct daily activities, such as paying for their groceries, without relying on others.

Webinar: Creating Accessible Content

March 20th, 2019

Tzviya Siegman, Information Standard Lead at Wiley and member of the W3C Advisory Board is taking part in this NISO webinar entitled: Long Form Content: Ebooks, Print Volumes and the Concerns of Those who Use Both. Her presentation will offer an overview of accessibility, covering the basic definition of accessibility and the standards that define it, the business, social, and legal obligations around accessibility and the practices for getting started on an accessible workflow and resources, testing, and tooling for accessibility. Don’t miss this essential guide!

Date

March 20, 2019

Venue

Online webinar

Learn More

Full details including how to register can be found at the NISO website.

New European Legislation Welcomed by FEP

Charlotte Eyre from The Bookseller has reported:

“The Federation of European Publishers (FEP) has welcomed a European act of parliament created to make products and services more accessible, saying ebooks will be covered by the provisions of the legislation. The European Accessibility Act, passed by the European Parliament today (13th March), was created to try and remove and prevent any barriers in the market for accessible products, making it easier for businesses to create accessible products for elderly consumers or those with disabilities.The FEP said European publishers ‘welcome’ the act and president Rudy Vanschoonbeek commented: “It is our responsibility as publishers, as ‘brokers’ of content, to make sure that the readers are as numerous and diverse as possible. To be able to offer access to the great books we publish, to everyone is a necessary objective.”

The full news piece from The Bookseller is available here.

Congratulations to the 2019 Winners of the ABC International Excellence Awards

The winners of the Accessible Books Consortium International Excellence Awards were announced last night at the London Book Fair 2019. Nominees were judged on the criteria of outstanding leadership or achievements in improving the accessibility of ebooks or other digital publications for persons who are print disabled.

Both worthy winners were at the ceremony to receive the awards from Monica Halil-Lövblad from the Accessible Books Consortium.

Monica Halil Lovblad from ABC with the winners from eKitabu

 

 

 

 

 

From Kenya, eKitabu won the Initiative award.

Monica Halil Lovblad from ABC with the winners from Editorial 5

 

 

 

 

 

Editorial 5 (ED5) from Brazil, won the Publisher Award.

Our congratulations to all nominees and winners.

Photograph Credit: LBF

 

 

 

Inspiring Words from Industry Leaders: Interview with Tzviya Siegman, Wiley

Head shot of Tzviya Siegman who is the subject of this interviewInclusive Publishing is continuing with its popular series of interviews with industry leaders and their approach to accessibility. Our first interview of 2019 is with Tzviya Siegman, Information Standards Lead at Wiley and a member of the World Wide Web Consortium Advisory Board. Tzviya is passionate about accessibility and has inspired many industry colleagues to embrace the accessibility opportunities offered by digital publishing.

I have learned so much about the way that tools, systems, browsers, and reading systems work from my work on accessibility….it will help you become a better developer.

Why is inclusive publishing important to you and/or your organization?

We serve a variety of customer from students to research to corporate consumers. It is widely established that students require and deserve accessible materials. Wiley believes that our customers are life-long learners. Life-long learners need access to all materials

Do you have a top tip for others new to accessibility?

Start with the tools at W3C’s WAI website (https://www.w3.org/WAI/). Even after being involved in accessibility for years, I go back to these resources again and again. They start off simply and walk a beginner through the basics clearly.

What do you wish you knew about accessibility 10 years ago?

I wish I had a better understanding of “native” accessibility and the way that assistive technology works. Understanding the interactions of the Accessibility Tree and the DOM changed my approach to accessibility and design. There are a few articles and documents that can really help. Melanie Richards’ Semantics to Screen Reader (https://alistapart.com/article/semantics-to-screen-readers) explains this relationship really clearly.

·What do you think will be the biggest game changer for inclusive publishing in the next few years?

There are so many things in progress that it is hard to choose just one. There is a lot of work happening in the world of SVG that could have a huge impact on accessibility. SVG can be made accessibly, and as it is becoming a more widely used and accepted format. I have heard rumors about the Canadian government offering funding incentives to Canadian-owned publishers who publish accessibly. That would make a real difference.

For those still on the fence, why should they consider accessibility?

Accessible content and platform provides a better user experience for all users. Further, most users experience some form of disability at some point in their lives, whether it is situational (e.g. power loss requires navigating without sight), temporary (e.g. a broken arm requires hands-free navigation), or due to age (e.g. low-vision). Considering all users is usually good for business.

How have good inclusive publishing practices influenced the majority of your readers?

Writing image descriptions forces us to think about what an image truly conveys. If an image is too complicated to describe well, maybe it is also too complicated for a sighted reader to understand and it needs to go back to the author for improvement?

Can you sum up your attitude towards inclusive publishing in one sentence.

Inclusive publishing improves your content and makes it more available and useful to all users.

Do you have any final thoughts on accessibility or inclusive publishing practices you would like to share?

It might seem like a lot of work to make your content accessible, but I have learned so much about the way that tools, systems, browsers, and reading systems work from my work on accessibility. It is a lot of work, but it is also interesting work that will take you down a very interesting path and ultimately help your users. You will learn so much along the way, and it will help you become a better developer.

Rethinking Content for Inclusive Higher Education—A Two-Part Article from textBOX

A photograph of dozens of open books and atop one another. The right angles of the books' spines and edges contrastwith the folds and imprints of gently used pagesOver the last few months, textBOX has been on a listening tour, speaking with disability service offices and publishers to understand the challenges and opportunities they are facing with delivering accessible digital content. We were inspired to learn more about university and publisher accessible digital content perspectives from our discussions at the 2018 Accessing Higher Ground conference.

In this two-part article, we will take a closer look at university efforts to remedy accessibility issues with digital content and explore publisher progress in building accessibility into their workflows. The second article, due for publication in April, will focus on solutions to reduce time, resources and remediation costs at the same time as increasing equal access to accessible digital content.  

Visualizing the Gap: Educational Attainment Among Visually-Disabled Students

Visually-disabled college students depend on their disability service office (DSO) to provide training, support and accommodation as they pursue a degree in their chosen field. In 2016, the National Federation of the Blind collected statistics on educational attainment for individuals with a visual disability for the ages of 21 to 64 (NFB). The results, as shown in the graphic below, revealed that visually-disabled individuals are far below the US average. According to US Census data provided in 2017, 90% of all adults over the age of 25 have a high school diploma (Census.gov). When you isolate the visually-disabled population using the NFB data, only 31.6% achieve a high school diploma. For bachelor’s degrees, the educational attainment statistics are 34% for all adults but visually-disabled individuals continue to fall behind the general population with only a 15.7% bachelor’s degree completion rate.

A chart that shows the educational attainment statistics for non-instuttionalized individualswith a visual disability. 847,000 or 22.3% have less that high school graduation. 1,201,600 or 31.5% have a high school diploma or GED. 1,151,500 or or 30.3% have some college or associated degree. 598,000 or 15.7% have a bachelor's degree.

How can universities and publishers work together to break down degree attainment barriers? It starts with ensuring that all students are set up to succeed on the first day of every course, irrespective of their ability. A current challenge to meeting this goal is that universities continue to receive content requiring modification before it can be used by visually-disabled students. This is happening because many publishers are still not producing content in the current EPUB 3 digital publishing standard format, which is universally recognized as providing the greatest opportunity for born accessible content. For those who are working with EPUB 3, many are not meeting the requirements of EPUB Accessibility 1.0 specification. Digital content is, therefore, often inaccessible and requires universities to intervene to fix the issues for their students. Additionally, while there has been progress in recent years with transitioning to a born-accessible publishing strategy for newly published digital content, there is still a vast amount of inaccessible legacy content used by university professors. Universities cannot depend on consistent delivery of accessible EPUBs and end up having to rely instead on an outmoded process of remediating PDFs.

If It’s Broken, Fix It—Content Remediation as a Barrier to Student Success

American universities have legal and ethical responsibilities under the American Disabilities Act (ADA) to provide equal access and educational participation for all students. To meet ADA requirements, DSO staff are required to evaluate individual student needs and procure alternative course materials where necessary (e.g., audio files, eBooks, accessible PDFs or Word files). This process begins when the student enrolls in the course and submits a request to the DSO. Since publisher content delivered to online retail websites is often inaccessible, DSOs cannot direct visually-disabled students to purchase their course materials through these sites. Where this is the case, they must obtain alternative digital formats from publishers directly or through intermediary services such as the AccessText Network. Unfortunately, the DSO’s responsibility does not end there. Racing against the clock, they must complete thorough content analysis and remediation to deliver materials that are at least functionally accessible for the student by the first day of class—this is their responsibility to their students. Wherever materials originate, as mainstream content or specialist format, there are still areas that need attention. Common issues that need correcting include: structural and navigational errors, manual digital format conversion for Text-to-Speech technology and missing or poor-quality image descriptions (alt-text) for visuals, such as photographs, tables, figures and graphs.

Susan Kelmer, Alternative Format Production Program Manager at the University of Colorado, Boulder, finds that EPUB can be unpredicatble. “Students with print disabilities (who are not blind) count on features like page numbering, and the ability to access the entire book in small portions with their technology (like being able to access a single chapter at a time). While there are some standards in place for EPUBs, not all publishers have embraced these. And for a student using text-to-speech technology, as long as the EPUB can’t be read out loud and navigated effectively, that becomes a full stop. The EPUB must then be dissected and compared to a hard copy of the book in order to get all of the elements back into the document.” Kelmer’s point is key to the successful implementation of EPUB workflows. EPUB industry standards and best practices address structural and navigational issues and eliminate the need for universities to remediate content. Publishers must adhere to EPUB Accessibility 1.0 standards so that the whole supply chain can benefit from the additional features of EPUB. However, until they can do this Susan prefers the predictability of remediating PDFs because she can feel confident that the turnaround time will be 4 days or less. The CU Bolder DSO often has tight deadlines and does not have time to sort through time consuming issues.

One of the most time-consuming tasks for remediating digital content is the process of writing image descriptions. Philip Voorhees, an Accessibility Specialist who has worked at numerous universities throughout his career, feels “the quality of image descriptions has improved over the last five years as publishers struggle with the level of detail, subject matter and context of the image within the text.” While the quality of image description has improved, publishers must continue to prioritize high-quality image descriptions to reduce the amount of content remediation work for universities and to improve learning outcomes. Publishers must also consider establishing a backlist content remediation  process to help universities provide alternative formats for older titles that do not have image descriptions.    

Missing complex image descriptions in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) textbooks have a tremendous impact on the DSO and students. Jamie Axelrod, Director of Disability Resources and ADA Coordinator/504 Compliance Officer at Northern Arizona University, described a delivery experience last semester with a graphics-heavy Biology textbook. The student enrolled late and Jamie’s team did not have enough time to create complex image descriptions. They enlisted the help of the publisher but ultimately, they were unable to meet the deadline. The student struggled to catch up after receiving the course materials at the end of the second week and decided to withdraw from the course. Publishers need to understand the detrimental impact that incomplete course materials can have on a print-disabled student.

The cumbersome process of delivering timely accessible content creates unnecessary dead ends for visually-disabled students pursuing higher education. Universities cannot solve this problem alone and need publishers help to create dynamic accessible content. Together, they can close the education gap and provide pathways to success.

Step by Step: The Shift Towards Delivering Accessible Content

Digital products enable publishers to reach an evolving population of students who are regular consumers of digital media while, at the same time, reducing the negative sales impact of the used print textbook market. Digital products can also be widely distributed to a larger customer base through popular online retailers like Amazon, VitalSource and RedShelf. Online retailers are quickly advancing the accessibility of their platforms in line with industry-standard recommendations. This rapid progress puts pressure on publishers to improve the accessibility of their content so that they are not out of step with the retailers they rely on to expand their businesses. Furthermore, due to the inconsistency of accessible content, online retailers recently began highlighting the level of accessibility within their product descriptions to respond to customer demands, improve sales and stand out in a competitive market. For example, VitalSource now includes accessibility specifications on product pages to provide customers the ability to discover and select accessible content that meets their needs.

Academic publishers are also competing with one another to develop proprietary platforms that offer immersive digital reading experiences to transform learning outcomes. These platforms are creating new possibilities for instructors to connect with students both in the classroom and online. If publishers do not uphold industry standards, visually-disabled students cannot participate or benefit equally from the transforming classroom experience.

Publishers have begun to respond to the importance of creating born-accessible content and they have made tremendous improvements over the last few years. Bill Kasdorf stated in his recap of a 2018 Accessing Higher Ground panel session with the Big 5 (Cengage, Macmillan Learning, McGraw-Hill Education, Pearson and Wiley), “… [the Big 5] 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” (Inclusive Publishing). The Big 5 have forged a path for others to follow to resolve accessibility issues and respond directly to customer needs. This is just the beginning and more work needs to be done to reduce content remediation and improve the student learning experience.

It is important to note that creating born-accessible digital products is not a simple or straightforward process. Many publishers have undergone a complete overhaul of digital production workflows and title management systems to address WCAG standards, simultaneously supporting multiple ebook formats and resolving proprietary platform accessibility issues. With expanding digital product offerings, new quality assurance and user experience testing procedures have been developed to ensure proper content functionality on platforms, browsers and devices. This is often a moving target with technological advancements that change industry standards and customer expectations. Since accessibility involves nearly every department within the publishing organization, internal committees and task forces have been established to prioritize accessibility projects and advocate for additional resources.

Image descriptions have been a challenging endeavor for publishers. Many have not been able to get their authors to write the descriptions and there are limited editorial staff resources for this specialized task. Delays and complications due to clearing third-party image permissions have relegated writing image descriptions to the end of the publishing process. This results in publishers having limited time to focus on the creation, review and editing of this critical content. Additionally, outsourced production vendors have also struggled to deliver quality and consistency, especially for complex images, creating costly remediation work down the line for publishers and universities.

Publishers are indeed focusing on advancing accessibility by making improvements to the most accessible industry-standard ebook format, EPUB 3. While industry standards and best practices may not address every need for print-disabled users, they do create a unified approach and direction that promotes change, accountability and progress while increasing equal access. To prioritize EPUB 3 implementation, many publishers have made a strategic decision not to provide accessible PDFs that would tie up valuable resources. The PDF format dates to 1993 and, despite its familiarity and ubiquity, missing image descriptions creates a poor reading experience for users. The low university demand for EPUB 3 in exchange for PDF makes it difficult for publishing organizations to build a business case and allocate resources for EPUB 3. This ultimately creates a vicious cycle for both publishers and universities and has inhibited the widespread adoption of born-accessible EPUB 3 content. While it is acknowledged that we must be in a transitional stage until publishers can deliver fully accessible content and platforms, visually-disabled students should not suffer from delays as a result. Publishers must prioritize accessibility and expedite solutions to eliminate the need for universities to provide PDF stop-gap measures.   

At the Crossroads: Shaping the Future of Accessible Content

If students struggle to gain access to information, publishers and universities are setting up barriers to achieving educational goals that have an impact on long-term employment prospects. According to the National Federation of the Blind, only 29.5% of non-institutionalized US individuals with a visual disability between the ages of 21 and 64 were in full-time employment in 2016 (NFB). This statistic is clearly unacceptable and can only be resolved by publishers and universities working together and committing to action plans for change.

In the next article, we will explore solutions to eliminate content remediation, help publishers build a business case that propels born-accessible publishing and establish a sustainable action plan for inclusive higher education. By working together, we can disable barriers and enable learning.

 

This article was kindly submitted by Caroline Desrosiers + Huw Alexander, Co-Founders of textBOX. To learn more about textBOX please visit the textBOX website or reach out at hello@textboxdigital.com

Sunset of EPUB 2 Approaches in Italy

Glorious sunset in Rome with the silhouette of St Peter's Basilica dominating the skylineThe specifications of the EPUB 2, as defined by the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF) date back to 2007. For several years, however, EPUB 3 has been available and in the next months we will be presented with the new updated version—EPUB 3.2., defined by the W3C, after the integration with the IDPF.

Version 2 of EPUB has more or less become obsolete and ha snot been updated or supported since 2014: the W3C therefore invites content producers to move on to new versions, as all their efforts will now focus on EPUB 3 and the development of new specifications like Web Publications. This means that new versions of software for creating EPUBs, control software (EPUBCheck) and reading software (ereader and app) will no longer support EPUB 2.

The Italian market, like many other international markets, still produces most of their new ebook titles in the EPUB 2 format; content producers do not feel the need to switch to the new format. As Dave Cramer, co-chair of the EPUB 3 Community Group, says: EPUB 2 is “Good Enough” (http://epubsecrets.com/good-enough-a-meditation-on-the-past-present-and-future-of-epub.php). Why change to EPUB 3 just for the sake of it?

Furthermore, publishers have been distracted by the  ‘exotic’ functions (multimedia, interactivity, animations, fixed layout, etc.) that are badly supported by digital reading solutions and haven’t focused on EPUB 3 core features.

On February 28th Fondazione LIA and the Italian Publishers Association organized a training course on EPUB 3, with the pressing title “The sunset of the EPUB 2 is approaching” for Italian publishers. Participants came from various sized publishers representing different market segments—trade, academic, education.

According to Gregorio Pellegrino, Chief Accessibility Officer of Fondazione LIA, and lecturer of the course “This course launched the transition of Italian publishers to EPUB 3. A further step forward for born accessible publishing in Italy”.

The course explained how good  a format EPUB 3 is for text-based content (e.g. fiction and non-fiction for the trade market) currently published in EPUB 2: better typography, better content semantics, alignment to the modern standards of the Open Web Platform, and, of course, better accessibility.

To better understand the transition from EPUB 2 to EPUB 3, Luc Audrain Head of Digitalization at Hachette Livre France, made a testimony presenting his experience on the topic, offering interesting advice to delegates on how to deal with suppliers, how to consider the new format not just as an extra job, but as a new opportunity to reach for more users.

This article was kindly submitted by Gregorio Pellegrino, Chief Accessibility Officer of Fondazione LIA.

The Business of Accessibility: Content that is More Usable is More Valuable

Delegates avidly watching the presentations

This article has been re-posted with the kind permission of the author, Abbie Headon and Bookmachine

I have to finally accept that it’s too late to say ‘Happy New Year’, but we’re right on time to say ‘Happy new Unplugged series!’ The 2019 series of BookMachine Unplugged events kicked off on Wednesday 20 February at a new venue, The Century Club, with a focus on the theme of accessibility. BookMachine Editorial Board member Ken Jones, our Production specialist, and his panel Huw AlexanderStacy Rowe and Alicia Wise provided important insights into why accessibility matters and what we need to be doing about it.

Are You an Accessibility A11y?

Ken started by setting accessibility in context: between 10% and 20% of the world’s population live with some form of disability; 36 million people are registered blind worldwide; and 217 million people live with some form of visual impairment. But the audience requiring accessible content is even larger than this, when you take into account mobility issues, dyslexia and attentional disorders, to give just a few examples.

The concept of accessibility is not a new one: Braille was developed in the 1820s, the RNIB was founded in 1868, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights explicitly included people with disabilities 70 years ago. So, while it may be tempting to think of accessibility as a modern phenomenon, it really isn’t – and therefore we have even less excuse for not having it at the heart of our publishing. And it was sobering to hear from Ken that currently less than 8% of the world’s books ever make it into accessible formats.

But we’re not on our own if we want to start improving our publishing practices. As well as experts like this event’s panel, there are countless people out there on the internet who are ready to help. A Twitter search for #a11y and #eprdctn will open up a world of helpful discussion around the topics of accessibility and ebook production. (And if you’re wondering what ‘a11y’ means, it’s the word ‘accessibility’ with the 11 middle letters swapped for ‘11’.)

A Library Full of Blank Pages

Stacy Rowe (Reader Services Product Manager, RNIB Bookshare) asked us to think about what it means when content isn’t accessible. Imagine walking into a fantastic library, with shelves stretching for miles. You search until you find the book you want – but when you open it, you discover all the pages are blank. That’s what life is like when content is not accessible to you. And perhaps the pages you aren’t able to read contain the very information you need for your education and your future career: without this information, you won’t be able to start off your life on the right track.

If we stop to think about it, there’s no need for the world’s publishing to be divided into ‘normal’ and ‘accessible’ content. If all content is structured in an accessible way, then everyone can use it. An accessible book is one that can be read using text-to-speech, enlargeable text and text-to-braille conversion – this is what we need to be aiming for. As long as our content is set up in the right way, it’s ready for apps and other accessibility devices to transform it into a medium that’s right for each user.

As an example, Stacy demonstrated for us how an ebook can be read super-fast using text-to-speech app VoiceOver and transformed into Braille by an Orbit Reader device. Thanks to this technology, readers can access Braille content through a handy device small enough to fit in a coat pocket, instead of needing a five-foot-tall mountain of Braille printouts. This demonstration underlined the fact that, as publishers, we don’t have to reinvent the wheel to make our books accessible: all we have to do is present our content in a well-structured way that people can use in the way they need to.

Some of Us Need the Stick

There are lots of positive reasons for us to provide accessible content: we know it’s good to spread our books to as many readers as possible; it can give us an advantage over our competitors, and it can boost out corporate social responsibility profile. But it’s not all about the carrots: some of us respond better to the stick, and there are plenty of legal sticks out there that we need to be aware of. Alicia Wise (Director, Information Power and Founding Member, ABC) explained that the two key types of laws that affect us on issues of accessibility concern copyright and equality.

The international copyright regime is monitored by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). The Marrakesh Treaty, administered by WIPO, enshrines the right of people with disabilities to make accessible copies without reference to copyright restrictions. Recent signatories to this treaty include the EU and USA – so its terms apply to us. We’re also obliged to follow the legislation of our own countries, such as the UK Equality Act 2010, which protects people from discrimination based on nine protected characteristics, one of which is disability.

It’s vital that we’re aware of these laws, because the stick of legal action is real. Domino’s Pizza was recently sued in the UK for having a non-accessible ordering app, and other organisations have been held to account for accessibility failures too. If you’re presenting the case for accessible publishing to your senior management team, the potential for damaging legal action is a motivating factor they are sure to take seriously.

Do you have to be perfect straight away? No. If you’re honest, and signal your awareness of accessibility as an important issue, your willingness to engage with it and your desire for help, people will support you. So we shouldn’t be intimidated by the work involved – we just need to get started. Alicia pointed us to the free online accessibility checker, Ace by DAISY, and there are lots of people who are ready to help us live a stick-free future.

A Picture Painted in Words

Huw Alexander (COO and co-founder, textBOX) gave us a tour of one of the thorniest accessibility issues faced by publishers: how to deal with images. Publishers who have embraced the modern EPUB3 standard are able to deal with almost all aspects of accessibility, but describing images in a way that works for all users remains a tricky issue. And if you imagine using a textbook where all the images, graphs and infographics are blank or missing, you can see just how limited your access to the book’s information would become.

Huw gave us some examples of the power of good image descriptions. A key factor is appropriateness: if a book has a picture of a painting simply to illustrate the concept of ‘paintings’, then the description can be very brief. But if, on the other hand, an in-depth book on art contains a reproduction of an artwork, then the description needs to be much more thorough. Looking at The Arnolfini Portrait, a detailed description would mention not only the couple standing at the centre of the work but also other key elements, such as the oranges in the foreground, signifying the couple’s wealth, and the fact that the only character in the painting who makes eye contact with the viewer is the couple’s dog. The level of information required depends on the context the image appears in.

Adding image descriptions improves the user experience, and accessibility is a central plank of that user experience. Making your content accessible to more people makes your books better, leading to better sales as well as helping you fulfil your goal of sharing information – which is why we’re all in this business, surely.

The Time to Start is Now

Overall, our first Unplugged panel of 2019 showed that there are a host of reasons to start producing accessible content: knowing we’re doing the right thing; reaching more readers; having a marketing and sales advantage; future-proofing our content by making it machine-readable; and protecting ourselves from legal action. And there are lots of people out there who can help us get started. So really, we have no excuse: it’s 2019 and it’s time to make our content accessible to everyone.

ASPIRE Awards

The evening ended with the presentation of the ASPIRE Awards by Alistair McNaught, Subject Specialist (Accessibility and Inclusion) at Jisc. The awards were as follows:

Awards for Publishers:

Winner: Palgrave Macmillan

Highly commended: Red Globe Press; Policy Press

Sponsored by VitalSource

Awards for Platform Providers:

Winner: EBSCO

Highly commended: Kortext; VitalSource

Sponsored by textBOX

Abbie Headon is Commissioning Editor at Prelude Books, and also writes and edits books as Abbie Headon Publishing Services. She is a 2018 Bookseller Rising Star and sits on the BookMachine Editorial Board

Funding Boost for Australian Inclusive Publishing Initiative

The Australian Publishers Association (APA) has announced that it has been successful in securing funds from the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund for the production of two accessible publishing guides. Michael Gordon-Smith, Chief Executive of the APA has commented:

“This funding is a boon to two priority projects for the Australian Inclusive Publishing Initiative. Important information will get to the right people sooner and that should make a difference to the level of inclusive publishing. Uncertainty is a brake on what gets done. This funding will mean we can create two key guides. A copyright guide will present the legal framework clearly and succinctly. A publishing guide will introduce inclusive publishing practices, and include practical information on workflow and content. It’s a valuable opportunity to help build the industry’s capability.”

Further details about this exciting news can be found at the Australian Publishers Association website. Our congratulations to all involved.