Larry Goldberg, Director, Media Access Group Director at WGBH and The Carl and Ruth Shapiro Family National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM) Geoff Freed, Director of Technology Projects and Web Media Standards, The Carl and Ruth Shapiro Family National Center for Accessible Media NCAM An introduction to evolving authoring and display technologies, including mobile devices and e-readers, that provide reading experiences for people with print disabilities. The presentation will include discussion of new reading systems, publishing tools and practices, the EPUB 3 standard, "smart graphics," best publishing practices, and the Content Model for accessible images. Also discussed will be Federal and state requirements for accessible textbooks and relevant public policy initiatives.

1. Bor n Accessible:
Making e-books fully
inclusive from day one
Carl and Ruth Shapiro Family
National Center for Accessible Media
at WGBH (NCAM)
October 19, 2012

2. NCAM is… 2
 A research and development department within Boston
public media leader WGBH
 Involved with media and technology on all platforms,
especially digital publishing and online education
 Dedicated to leveling the playing field for people with
disabilities
 Engaged in standards, policy, research, outreach, tech
 Funded by public and private grants and Strategic
Partnerships (consulting)

5. 5
Part I:
E-books

6. Broadly speaking… 6
 E-books can be made accessible
— but it’s more than just handing someone a talking
device
 It’s all about structure…
— navigation
> TOC, headings, tables, lists
— seeking/finding
— investigating objects
— reading order

7. Broadly speaking… 7
 …and control
— multimedia players
— interactive objects
— the reader itself (hardware or software)

8. What’s an accessible e-book? 8
 More than just a talking book or a talking device
 Access to structure:
— text elements (chapters, headings, paragraphs, sentences)
— images (short and long descriptions)
— data tables (header vs data cells; X/Y orientation)
— lists (number of items; nesting)
 Access to controls
— multimedia (player controls; captions; descriptions)
— interactives (controls; Flash or otherwise)
— system (menus and special features; stores; hardware)

9. E-book devices 9
 Hardware
— Kindle
— Nook
— Sony Reader
— iPad/iPhone/iPod touch
— Android tablets/phones
— desktop/laptop computers
— others

10. E-book devices 10
 Software
— Adobe Digital Editions (Win, Mac)
— Adobe Reader (Win, Mac, iOS, Android)
— Nook (Win, Mac, iOS, Android)
— iBooks (iPad, iPhone, iPod touch)
— Kindle (Win, Mac, iOS, Android, WinPhone,
browsers, Blackberry OS)
— Web browser
— others

11. E-book formats 11
 E-books are available in a variety of formats
— EPUB 3
— PDF
— HTML
— AZW
— DOC
— TXT
 Not all formats provide mechanisms for delivering an
accessible e-book

12. E-book formats 12
 There is no such thing as push-button accessibility
 Author is responsible for providing an accessible
document
— basics:
> provide a TOC and use headings
> identify/describe images
> mark up forms (e.g., tests) properly
> mark up data tables
> provide adequate contrast and clear layout
— not unlike accessible-HTML basics

13. E-book authoring 13
 InDesign (EPUB, PDF)
 iBooks Author (EPUB 3 variant (.ibooks))
— exports books for iPad only
— accessibility guidelines coming soon
 Adobe Acrobat (PDF via source files from Word,
InDesign, OpenOffice, others)
 OpenOffice (EPUB via Writer2ePub; PDF)
 Pages (EPUB)
 Online services or converters (Calibre, Lulu, etc.)

14. E-book accessibility: hardware 14
 Hardware accessibility varies
— controls aren’t always clearly identified
— TTS not available or may be inadequate
> TTS may only allow access to text, not to
system
> DRM may affect TTS

15. E-book accessibility: software 15
 Software accessibility also varies
— may not be usable with screen readers
— TTS not available or may be inadequate
> may only allow access to text, not to system
> DRM may affect TTS
> may not identify elements such as images or tables
 Nook/Kindle desktop and mobile software readers not currently accessible
to screen readers
 Adobe Reader, Adobe Digital Editions are (reasonably) accessible to
screen readers
 iBooks is reasonably accessible on iOS devices
 Accessible Kindle plug-in for Windows
— requires a screen reader
— TTS reads book text; screen reader reads menus and controls

16. 16
Part II:
Digital Talking Books

17. DAISY/DTB 17
 DAISY Consortium (Digital Accessible Information
System) promotes standards for digital talking books
(DTB)
 A DTB is a multimedia representation of a print
publication
— DTBs can contain text, text+audio, audio only
— video support in development
 DTBs can be read using dedicated hardware or
software

18. DTB hardware readers 18

19. DTB software readers 19
 AMIS
 AnyDaisy (older Firefox extension)
 EasyReader
 ReadHear
 others

20. DTB general information 20
 DTB hardware readers have no visual component
 DTB software readers usually have a visual component
 DTBs are inherently accessible and are (usually) highly structured
 Multiple navigation modes
> headings
> words/sentences
> paragraphs
> chapters
> images (with descriptions)
 Depending on the DTB, these modes are all available in both text
and audio modes

21. 21
Part III:
DIAGRAM

22. DIAGRAM
 Digital Image and Graphic Resources for Accessible
Materials
 Five-year R&D project funded by Department of
Education, Office of Special Education Programs
(OSEP)
 Began in May 2010
 Awarded to Benetech along with partners:
— NCAM
— U.S. Fund for DAISY

23. DIAGRAM
 Access to images and graphics in educational content
through technology
 Make creating and using accessible images easier,
faster, more cost effective
— tools
— standards
— best practices and guidelines

24. How best to describe…

25. Poet: crowd-sourcing descriptions
 Poet is a Web-based, open-source tool for adding image
descriptions to DTBs
 For use by authors, publishers, accessibility providers
 Designed to:
– quickly identify all images in a book
– tag images needing descriptions
– author and edit descriptions
– provide guidance to describers (guidelines)
– stand-alone or integrate with content-production tools

26. New accessible e-book reader (2013)
 Open-source Web-based e-book reader based on
Readium
— Readium is a library for rendering EPUB documents
> system for building accessible e-book readers
 Support for variable fonts, colors
 Support for text-to-speech and synchronized word-by-
word highlighting (initially only in Chrome)
 Conforms to EPUB 3
 Works in conjunction with Bookshare bookshelf

27. Contact
Geoff Freed geoff_freed@wgbh.org
Larry Goldberg larry_goldberg@wgbh.org