APACE: Key outcomes Meet-up 1

Theme: Accessible e-books: creation and production

The Meet-up attracted 81/136 participants/registrees from 17 countries. 

The Meet-up started with an interview to introduce the theme. Julia Schengber (Rohwolt Verlag) was interviewed by Meet-up host Katie Durand. The video registration of this interview and the plenary wrap-up of the break-out sessions can be viewed on the APACE website {APACE Meet-up 1 Video registration}. 

Key outcomes Break-out sessions

Break-out sessions Policy, Content creation and Design

A checklist is a nice tool, but you need knowledge to use it properly

Participants agreed that a checklist is a nice tool to have, but it takes more than that. Foremost you need to have knowledge about accessible publishing in order to use a tool. Therefore training and possible consultancy are very important so people are skilled to use a checklist and tools.  

Some publishers are at the very beginning of their accessibility journey. For them, a checklist of requirements would be a great start. But only using a checklist can still result in inaccessible publications: “You need to understand the requirements to be able to really implement them”, according to one participant. Also, raising awareness is important before starting with the details of accessible publishing.  

It is also considered important that accessibility is seen as an issue that concerns the whole ecosystem of publishing. “We should not only focus on the accessibility of the e-book itself, but on the entire customer journey.” 

And as one participant put it: “Perfection is the enemy. You don't have to aim for 100% immediately. It's a process.” 

Responsibility of accessible publishing lies not just with managers

All participants agreed that it is not just a managerial responsibility. Editors, authors, translators, the IT department, designers and illustrators have to be involved too. Involvement always depends on the kind of project it is. 

Support from management is very important. Accessibility is part of the strategy of a company. It is therefore very important to have management on board. There are a lot of strategic choices: the production workflow, the people involved, the activity, the evaluation of the cost. So, accessibility is really a strategy. To get buy-in from management, you need good arguments. For instance, the argument that accessible publishing can expand reach and make books accessible to people with different needs. So, it depends what you want to offer, the number of people you think you will serve. 

Other parties that need to be involved are the end users to evaluate ebooks and pinpoint accessibility issues, as well as technical distributors of e-readers who can inform end users about the multiple settings that can help customers read e-books. Also, specialist organizations can help publishing houses with practical tools and training. 

Break-out sessions Production, Technology and Development

Balance between automated tools and human involvement

Several participants explained that automated tools (i.e. for AI, ACE) can be useful, but do not provide a 100% guarantee that a publication is accessible. A human check is often necessary. For instance to check alt-texts within the context: alt-texts written by AI are not comparable to the descriptions written by humans. It is still necessary to involve people in the process. There has to be a balance between automated tools and human involvement. It was mentioned that using tools also depends on the workflow a publisher has in place. 

It was mentioned that automatic tools can improve the creation of good InDesign files and great EPUBs with accessibility features. At this moment these are not enough to create born accessible EPUBs. It was also highlighted that with ACE it is possible to achieve good technical results but ACE cannot check the content. AI may provide a solution in the future, but we are not there yet. Automatic tools can help to avoid big mistakes but cannot identify all problems. For example, they cannot define a logical reading order. 

Mentioned advantages of using automated tools: 

• AI tools can save time. 

• AI for video and audio can automatically generate captions and subtitles even in another language. 

• A dream tool would recognise semantic structure and do the mark-up and tag language automatically 

• Creating accessible math using MathML  

Some publishers already provide guidelines to their providers/vendors with suggestions and rules to convert InDesign into an EPUB with accessibility features. Good InDesign files are the starting point. It was mentioned that InDesign is improving. The aim is to allow creators and publishers to create fully accessible EPUBs directly from the software without having to do any reworking on the code after exporting. It is not only a matter of tools, but also of quality in the production: garbage in means garbage out. 

Specialized libraries often rely on PDF files with learning materials as source material to produce accessible formats. Good source files would help specialized organisation to make accessible materials for the blind. 

Human involvement in the whole e-book ecosystem is inevitable

Accessibility is a challenge for the whole production/supply chain and everybody should be on the same page on what is needed. For example, if semantics are well planned and checked, there is less manual work for designers and e-book editors. Also, learning materials are challenging as they include many pictures, graphics, comics and such. Discussion between accessibility consultants and publishers could be helpful. 

The question was raised whether it is feasible to ask those who produce the print version if they can ensure, while producing the print version, that producing the accessible digital version will be easy. Another question was if there are systems or checklists to check the quality of what is produced by external suppliers. Some publishers have created a quality assurance/checklist, to include as much as possible work in the initial file, so that the amount of work to do in order to create an accessible EPUB is as less as possible. 

It proves that accessibility is a challenge for the whole production chain. Everybody involved should be aware of accessibility features for their part in the production process. 

Current hurdles to overcome

• For publishers at the very beginning of their accessibility journey, it is a challenge to know what they really need to do, what they need to focus on and how to get the information they need. 

• Questions around what the market needs in terms of accessibility metadata and how the market will push that metadata, or use to share the information with the end user. 

• Image description itself, but also the possible nightmare of costs for image description. Should there be focus, for instance on titles without images, popular titles? 

• Complex content: multilingual content, mathematical content 

• Huge efforts needed to tackle the backlist. 

• Very complex materials: images, interactive questions or puzzles, amongst other things, are difficult to make accessible. Help from specialist organizations would be required. 

• Getting the support you need from the IT department to make questions around metadata possible. 

• The legal framework around educational publications. 

• Not everyone is sure about what is expected in terms of legal requirements: there are grey areas in the law about the requirements and also about, for example, the backlist.  

• Making everybody aware of their involvement in producing and delivering accessible e-books.