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E-Books and Inclusion: dream come true or nightmare unending?
- 1. e-Books and Inclusion: dream come true or nightmare unending? Download this presentation http://slideshare.net/simonjball Dr Simon Ball JISC TechDis [email_address]
Notes de l'éditeur
- e-Books and Inclusion: dream come true or nightmare unending? Download this presentation http://slideshare.net/simonjball Dr Simon Ball JISC TechDis [email_address] 12/07/10
- JISC TechDis www.techdis.ac.uk Funded to increase accessibility and inclusion through technology in UK post-compulsory education. Work in many areas from guidance for teachers on using MS Word more accessibly, or using podcasts or video; to guidance for university managers on policy and strategy for inclusion. 12/07/10
- Work with UK Publishers Association JISC TechDis have been working with UKPA and RNIB for several years on several projects, including: Adding Value to Libraries publication The Right To Read campaign http://bit.ly/RightToRead The Publisher LookUp Database and Awards (nominations for 2010 awards still open) www.publisherlookup.org.uk 12/07/10
- Progress so far UK Publishers are moving steadily towards more accessible practices: Agreeing to support a standard procedure for universities obtaining accessible versions of texts: www.techdis.ac.uk/getaltformat Entering contact details for obtaining alternative formats in Publisherlookup database Consulting JISC TechDis on accessibility of new developments. This led to a potential problem being identified….. 12/07/10
- The Problem Most e-books are produced in EPUB format. EPUB is fairly accessible due to being based on XHTML. Most publishers/libraries wish to control or regulate the provision of e-books to those entitled (through registration, fee, library membership etc) The platforms that are used to deliver e-books often over-ride the accessibility of EPUB e-books (some were reported to be very inaccessible). 12/07/10
- The Concept In order to conceptualise the difficulty users faced (and to present this to the Publishers) we devised a model: The E-Book Accessibility Bridge. Users have to travel over the bridge to get over the ‘inclusion gap’ and achieve full access to their e-books. 12/07/10
- The Model The E-Book Accessibility Bridge Model The model illustrates the stages involved in accessing an e-book. At each stage in the process users with disabilities can experience barriers. Once a barrier has occurred the accessibility of all the later stages is compromised. The need for consistent good practice cannot be clearer. A high level of accessibility on the right-hand side of the bridge is wholly undermined if the user is locked out at an earlier stage. For the purpose of our research we started with the first point over which the publisher has control - logging onto the e-book platform. Each of the subsequent elements is explored in the sections that follow – searching for a title, navigating within the title, accessing the text and exporting data and quotes. 12/07/10
- The Research We decided to user-test for accessibility several of the more common e-book delivery platforms. 9 platforms were studied for us by The Shaw Trust. We wanted to test for their actual accessibility or usability – not their adherence to standards or guidelines. 12/07/10
- The Testing Each tested by a range of users for: Personalisation (e.g. font size, colour, style). Accessibility information (Plain English advice). Assistive technology compatibility for key tasks. Each was tested with: Voice recognition. Keyboard only access. Screenreader access. Low vision. 12/07/10
- Results 3 types of barriers were identified: Perceptual (users unable to find a feature that was present and accessible to their technology). Usability (access being theoretically possible, but impractical e.g. 100 keystrokes to browse to a book!) Technological (conflicts between the platform and the user’s assistive technology). 12/07/10
- The good news… Most of the platforms were accessible to most of the users, to some degree. Access is often prevented by something very small and therefore readily fixed, for example: Some required users to click on a button invisible to screen reading technology. Sometimes access could be greatly improved by the addition of ‘skip links’ features. Sometimes simply renaming links would help (so they don’t all read ‘go to e-book’!). 12/07/10
- The bad news... an example Number of ‘actions’ needed to browse to a book and read three pages. Table with 5 columns and 5 rows. The top row lists four e-book delivery platforms, W, X, Y and Z. Subsequent rows list how many ‘actions’ (one keyboard press or one click or one voice command is an ‘action’) are needed to browse to a book on the platform and read three pages. For each of four user-types the number of actions needed under platforms W, X, Y and Z are presented in order. Where an entry of XX is found, this means the task was not possible due to a barrier. Platform W X Y Z Keyboard-only 125 170 3 11 Mouse-only 7 5 9 3 Screen reader 9 18 XX 9 Voice input 6 7 XX 6 12/07/10
- Inconsistency No platform was wholly accessible. No platform was wholly inaccessible. Most platforms were inconsistent in their accessibility – for example Platform Y was completely keyboard-accessible for some tasks, and completely keyboard-inaccessible for others. 12/07/10
- The implications… The results have been positively received by the publishers. They need to get this right in order to deliver in media even more likely to present barriers e.g. mobile media 12/07/10
- The Guidance The results have been used to produce a Good Practice Guide for publishers on the accessibility of e-book platforms. http://bit.ly/EBooksAccessibility A second Good Practice Guide aimed at libraries supporting users to obtain and use e-books is due in August 2010. 12/07/10