For this recap, we've listed presentations led by local and international Tech Forum 2020 speakers that address accessibility in ebooks and audiobooks.

#BornAccessible #A11y

State of the #EbookCraft nation: #eprdctn #a11y in 2020

In this blog post, Laura Brady, Director, Cross-Media at House of Anansi Press, looks at ebooks and accessibility in the Canadian marketplace, exploring closely:

What work has been done up to now
The work that is going on at present
What’s left to do (looking at you, InDesign)
The research studies, state of standards, tool development, government funding, and the state of reading systems as seen through an accessibility lens

Read Laura Brady’s blog post here.

Introducing best practices for accessible workflows into the publishing cycle

Leah Brochu, Accessible Publishing Coordinator for the National Network for Equitable Library Service (NNELS), and Daniella Levy-Pinto, Accessibility Testing Coordinator with NNELS, share the findings of a project aimed at identifying and preventing accessibility barriers in the publishing industry. They also provide actionable items that stakeholders involved in the ebook production process (publishers, ebook designers, third-party producers, and ebook vendors) can do to produce content that is born accessible.

Read Leah and Daniella’s blog post here.

Towards an accessible digital publishing ecosystem

Using Fondazione LIA’s paper, E-books for all: Towards a digital publishing ecosystem, as a starting point, Elisa Molinari, Project Manager at Fondazione LIA, provides an overview of the different aspects involved for all the players in the book value chain that want to embrace accessibility.

Audiobook accessibility

In this panel, Jessica Albert, Wendy Reid, Simon Jaeger, Danny Faris, Robert Gordon, and Laurie Davidson discuss accessibility issues in mainstream audiobook formats, the relevance of the DAISY standard for audiobooks, and the work being done on the new audiobook standard. Their conversation also touches on the various automated tools that help make audiobooks more accessible and looks at how audiobooks are produced from a variety of perspectives: publisher, user, and alternate format producer (such as CNIB or NNELS).

Presenting the most enjoyable audiobook in the world

Marisa DeMeglio, Software Developer at DAISY Consortium, and Wendy Reid, Accessibility and Publishing Standards Lead at Rakuten Kobo, demonstrate the possibilities of audiobook accessibility through a series of demos while also explaining the formats and technology behind these demos, including the upcoming Audiobooks specification and Synchronized Media for Publications work.

Making Brazilian literature accessible

In this podcast episode, Isadora Cal, Account Manager at Bookwire Brazil, explains how accessible publishing is being tackled in Brazil. She shares how Bookwire is taking part in it, being in the position of an aggregator, and what further options they’re currently exploring.

Isadora Cal goes over how in Brazil, a country with so many adversities in all areas, accessible publishing is being tackled. She shares how Bookwire Brazil is taking part on it, being in the position of an aggregator, and what further options they’re currently exploring. Accessible publishing is a social issue, but one that will be profitable for companies and for the market as a whole.

These and more Tech Forum presentations can be found on our YouTube channel, BNC blog, and podcast. You can also consult this schedule — all the sessions listed in purple have free online content available.