We are delighted to host Jane Vincent's overview slides on the recent EDUPUB Summit, regarding emerging trends in standards for e-reader publications and devices, especially in the context of education.

1. Report from the
EDUPUB Summit
Feb. 24-25, 2016
Jane Vincent
Assistive Technology Manager

2. ● E-text accessibility does not yet have
guidelines comparable to WCAG.
● EPUB 3 includes the DAISY standard for
providing materials in alt. formats
● The EDUPUB Alliance aims to take this
standard further (EPUB for Education)
Background

3. “EPUB is designed to broadly accommodate all types of publications and
any kind of content. What the education profile does is to add certain
specifications and recommendations that optimize an EPUB for education.
Thus it adds a few requirements that are optional in EPUB—for example, it
requires that its metadata identifies it as an educational publication and
documents any accessibility features it contains—and it expands the EPUB
Structural Semantics Vocabulary to include terms relevant in education, for
example for learning objectives and assessments.”
http://idpf.org/edupub
.
EPUB for Education Goal

4. “Education-compliant Publications are
always valid EPUB 3 Publications, but, due
to the additional production requirements …
the reverse is not necessarily true.”
www.idpg.org/epub/profiles/edu/spec/#h.
tjhnw7v2npyg
Relationship

5. ● The International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF), responsible for
EPUB and related standards.
● IMS Global, responsible for important interoperability and metrics
standards like LTI, QTI, and the Caliper Analytics Platform
● The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), responsible for most of the
fundamental standards that govern the Open Web Platform.
● The DAISY Consortium
● The Book Industry Study Group (BISG)
● The Readium Foundation, “collaboratively developing technology to
accelerate the adoption of EPUB 3 and the Open Web Platform by the
Digital Publishing Industry.”
EDUPUB Alliance Participants

6. ● Publishers (Pearson, McGraw Hill, etc.)
● Benetech
● TextHelp
● University reps--Michigan, Penn State,
Georgia
● Reps of initiatives from Italy and South
Korea
Other participants

7. “The EPUB Accessibility and EDUPUB Alliance Summit
will provide an update on the emerging education profile
of EPUB 3 with a primary focus on accessibility on Day 1
and a series of detailed technical sessions on Day 2
across a range of topics (LTI launch & outcomes,
analytics, accessibility)”
#epuba11y
Summit Goals

8. ● High level accessibility guidelines
● Techniques document
● Test cases specification
● Accessibility checking tools
● Certification programs
● Reading system evaluations
Proposed EPUB for Education Deliverables

9. ● Michigan lauded privately and publicly by
the head of DAISY for our work on
HathiTrust.
Sidebar: GO BLUE!

10. ● Ensure requirements that can be applied
to 3.0, 3.1, and future Publications
● Allow each specification/profile to indicate
conformance
○ EPUB 3.1 might start as a “should,” while EPUB
for Education could enforce as a “must.”
○ Possibility of three conformance levels: E, EE,
EEE
Accessibility Profile

11. Publishing value chain

12. ● Publisher VitalSource (formerly
CourseSmart) received 100% score on
reading system accessibility.
○ Sign up to review beta of authoring tool, Content
Source, at https://www.vitalsource.com/vcs
○ Tool was demonstrated, using a mouse...
Proof of concept

13. ● Layout’s influence on comprehension
● Annotations
● Notes (Footnotes, Asides, Author Notes,
etc.)
● Positional location of text to indicate
different speakers
● Assessments
W3C Areas of Interest/Future Work

14. ● Navigating among multiple documents
● Skippability
● Escapability
● Page numbers/Pagination
● Phonetic spellings (proper nouns, jargon)
● Deeply nested headings
● Drop cap
WCAG Gaps

15. ● Needs more detail
○ Assessments particularly complex
● Needs more features
○ Publishers always innovating; e.g. sticky notes
Feedback

16. ● IMS Global Access for All (AfA)
○ Personalization
● Accessible Portable Item Protocol (APIP)
○ “First, the standard allows digital Tests and Items to be ported across APIP compliant
test item banks. Second, it provides a test delivery interface with all the information
and resources required to make a Test and an Item accessible for students with a
variety of disabilities and special needs.”
● Accessible Question & Test Interoperability Standard
(aQTI)
○ “aQTI” will provide full harmonisation between the IMS QTI, APIP and Accessibility
standards activities with the broader W3C Accessibility activities and to create an
end-to-end assessment creation and delivery format.
Standards from IMS

17. ● ARIA annotations
● Synthesized Speech markup (SSML)
/Pronunciation Lexicon Specification (PLS)
annotations
● Identification/use of variant resources, e.g.
for alternative language forms
● Internationalization
QTI/APIP Accessibility Features

18. ● Database of common images with
descriptions
○ Example: Periodic table
● Reduce need to constantly create new
descriptions
Image repository

19. ● Tremendous backlog of material
● Material is generated by non-publishers--
e.g., faculty--how do we get them to
conform?
● Readers also need to be accessible
○ Separate content from pedagogical design and both from delivery
(similar to WCAG 1.3, “Create content that can be presented in
different ways (for example simpler layout) without losing
information or structure.)
Feedback from Universities/Unizin

20. ● Demo of new navigation strategy -- “How
can this be made accessible?”
○ Technical: “We don’t care.”
○ Interface: “Need to care very much.”
Sidebar: Holistic perspective

21. ● Free; forthcoming from the Book Industry
Study Group
● Presented by Bill Kasdorf, who is local and
has been working with Charles Watkinson
(U-M Press)
● Provides quick info bites and links to
extensive appendices
QuickStart Guide to Accessible Publishing

22. ● Build on existing work
○ E.g.: looking for open source a11y checkers that can be expanded
to review EPUB documents
● Input on standards happily accepted
● Pearson and DAISY both working on accessible
readers
● IMS starting a collaboration to:
○ Provide independent testing
○ Share accessible materials
○ Develop procurement language
Next Steps