Many of us have been working with the EPUB standard for several years, but one long-standing challenge for Canadian publishers, particularly small ones, is that the requirements for accessible EPUB 3 can seem very daunting.
Recent work by Laura Brady shows that many Canadian publishers are still producing EPUB 2, and those who are producing EPUB 3 are not making great use of accessibility features.
To try to address some of the problems, we’re working on an accessible publishing summit to be held in November or January. The purpose of this summit is to better understand who can do what to create accessible EPUB files, and then explain this work to stakeholders along the EPUB publishing chain. Our overall goal is to support publishers in making their books accessible from the start — this approach both maximizes the market for reading, and saves taxpayer funds on alternate-format production for students and other readers who have print disabilities.
If a book is produced correctly, it will work with a variety of assistive technology tools without requiring further intervention. To get to that point, we need to agree about what our standards are, and then build an understanding of the workflows that are most likely to result in meeting those standards. This is what we hope to do at our summit, and then present at ebookcraft 2019.
