EPUB Accessibility 1.0: New Opportunities for Authors, Publishers and Readers - Digital Book World

"The EPUB Accessibility 1.0 standard uses web technology (the foundation of ebooks) to make publications available to the many readers who can’t access print materials. It’s a marriage of technology and content, and can serve as a means to expand and enhance what we think of as a book.

Book editors are used to omitting text to fit a desired page count; paper is expensive. That disappears with ebooks.

There can be expanded navigation: numerous tables of contents (chapters, illustrations, tables). There can be ,ore comprehensive indexes, more thorough descriptions of images, more thoughtfully tagged asides, backmatter, and citations—more material that authors and publishers should only see as added value.

We know what parts of a book are: title page, preface, part opener, chapter, and so on. To be accessible, an ebook needs correct labeling. All an editor needs to do is correctly mark up a manuscript so the ebook developer can apply the correct EPUB type.

Connecting Authors, Publishers, and Readers

These features are wonderful, but they don’t just appear. Tables of contents need to be built. Indexes have to be written, with hyperlinks built in when the Index is created. Book sections need to be labeled.

But these are familiar tasks. They just need some extra planning at the start of a project to be fully implemented. While they require a bit more work, they also remove limits on what a book can be.

Over the next few posts I’ll explore not just the opportunities accessibility brings, but also legal requirements and practical considerations. Making ebooks accessible can build a stronger alliance between authors, publishers, and their audience."