Leah Brochu, presenter, Accessible Publishing & Resources Coordinator at NNELS

Earlier this month, BookNet colleagues Adaobi Nnaobi and Monique Mongeon attended the Accessible Publishing Summit hosted by the National Network for Equitable Library Service (NNELS). On February 6 and 7, 2023, various stakeholders across the accessible publishing landscape came together to share their knowledge and perspectives.

Objectives

During the summit, attendees were encouraged to gather in groups where they tackled questions about the strengths, weaknesses, sustainability considerations, and possible solutions for different topics. The topics:

Metadata
The Needs of Publishers
Certification and Quality Assurance of EPUB Files
Copyright, Licensing, and the Marrakesh Treaty
Distribution, Procurement, and Platforms

Below are four takeaways from those discussions.

Diversity of reading

It’s clear that we need to center the perspectives of people with lived experiences. On the first day of the summit, attendees got accessibility demonstrations from four members of NNELS' accessibility testing team: Ka Li, Tobe Duggan, Patrick Bouchard, and John Ylioja. They shared their experiences using different screen readers (VoiceOver, NVDA) and reading systems (Apple Books, Kindle, Thorium Reader). They showed us how they preferred to use technology and the problems they encountered when using them. This was an invaluable experience as developers need testers. We need to work with and employ people with lived experience to be able to know what’s working, what’s not, and identify opportunities for advancement. This is vital to the improvement of accessible technologies.

Advocacy & education

Another takeaway that jumped out was that there needs to be an emphasis on making accessibility a priority throughout the entire publishing workflow, starting with the author and carrying through to distribution. It's not sustainable to have only one employee — typically someone in production — be the only one handling and advocating for accessibility. This involves training staff on their roles and getting publishers into certification programs like Benetech’s Global Certified Accessible program. It’s also important to make sure that any knowledge gained is shared with other members of staff to ensure that progress isn't lost with staff turnover and instead is leveraged by getting more people involved in the application of the acquired knowledge and skills.

Beyond certification and staff training, education at the post secondary level is another area that needs reimagining. Publishing programs may only have a small taste of accessibility in a digital production course but that's not enough. Accessibility training should be spread throughout the courses in a publishing program. The Chang School of Continuing Education is offering an accessible publishing course which is a step in the right direction. If we start with education, it will be much easier to translate that learning into publishing workflows.

We need more advocacy in publishing houses and the accessibility community around education, accessible workflows, discoverable metadata, and more to be able to move forward.

Discoverability & awareness

We do a lot of work to make books accessible and available to all readers but if those books aren't discoverable or if people aren't aware of these features, we’re not getting anywhere. Accessible technologies like reading systems and screen readers work in different ways and so not all reading systems support all accessibility features. Helpful components like accessibility summaries, hazards, and features are not searchable on reading systems which makes it difficult for users to utilize the technology to the best of its ability. Within the industry, there’s also a lack of clarity around what accessibility metadata is, what the tags actually mean, and how it should be used which can lead to inaccuracy or their absence.

There also needs to be user-friendly, marketable language to increase readers' awareness of accessible books. Right now, a lot of books and publishers are being certified. While that’s great, does the end user know about it? Do they know what it means and understand the best ways to access those accessibility features? Why should a student who is used to PDFs get an ebook instead? We need to look into getting accessible ebooks into the minds of the average user. We also need more research into how people with print disabilities use reading systems and their perspectives on how the metadata is displayed.

Funding

Funding was a major topic at the summit which isn't surprising considering a lot of accessibility work relies on funding from the government (for example, the Canada Book Fund and Employment and Social Development Canada). Allocating funding within publishing houses can also be an issue as it’s usually tied to print runs and this can be detrimental to digital production. Audiobooks can be expensive to produce and without funding, it would be difficult for some publishers to continue producing them. We need continued and consistent funding in order to retain knowledgeable staff and improve accessible technologies.

There were numerous topics brought up for discussion at the 2023 Accessible Publishing Summit. Attendees came up with solutions, shared knowledge, and sometimes had more questions than answers. Accessibility has come far since the first Accessible Publishing Summit in 2019 but there's still so much to do. Accessible books benefit everyone and we should all be working towards a fully accessible reading experience.