Creating your content in accessible formats makes it more usable for everyone!
In this presentation from the 2019 Typefi User Conference, Solutions Consultant Damian Gibbs discusses the principles of accessibility and the many reasons why publishers might want to (or be required to) make their content accessible.
He also explains how Typefi can help customers produce content in accessible formats with minimal additional cost.
“Reducing barriers to content is not about dumbing down content, but rather, creating an environment where the physical limitations become temporary and usability is increased.”
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And for publishing, this is allowing people, regardless of any special needs, the ability to read, hear, and interact with your content. The barriers to content and comprehension can mean different things to different people. So poor eyesight, limited physical ability with your hands, dyslexia, colorblindness-- just a few. And often, these impact negatively by the very thing that we are trying to give them-- the content. Now, think about some of your publications. Have you ever used multiple colors in your tables? Typically, accounting tables, for example, to show positive and negative numbers-- red and green, or red and blue? This is not so great for somebody who suffers from color blindness and has difficulty telling the difference between these two colors. Just by using brackets to indicate negative numbers would have made a world of a difference. That great font that the designer said that you had to use where the O and the A were not too dissimilar, well, if you're dyslexic, you've got a problem. So reducing barriers to content is not about dumbing down content, but rather, creating an environment where the physical limitations become temporary and usability is increased. So making accessibility improvements should always help people. And, in the best case, we take something from being unusable to usable for some people. And, in the worst case, we make something a little easier to use for everybody. So disabilities are not binary. Everybody is imperfect, in some respect. And we all fall somewhere in the continuum. I wear two pairs of glasses. Not at the same time, but I wear two pairs of glasses. And when looking for a definition of disability, I came across this formula, which I think was quite poignant, especially for publishing, as it moves the disability away from a condition that somebody has to include the circumstances, or environment, or a thing which creates that disability. So here are two card machines. And I think we've all encountered these card machines at some point. So if you have some difficulty with your ability with short-sightedness, for example, and just look at the two on screen-- or your finger dexterity. The interface creates a real barrier and the challenge to make a payment due to the small topography or poor color rendition. And so that's not really great fun when you're in a long queue and your inability to use the device efficiently is frustrating, due to experiencing a temporary, although a minor, disability, and even though you might think of yourself as full able-bodied. So you could be perfectly able-bodied individual, but if you have difficulty reading something because the font is too small, or the colors are not-- you know, don't have the correct contrast, you're temporarily experiencing a disability, and now fall somewhere on the continuum. Adoption of accessibility opens up new worlds to many people previously excluded from opportunities, such as ramps next to a building where people with mobility challenges, or perhaps are confined to wheelchairs, can use. And don't forget, having a ramp outside a building makes it easier for people pushing children in prams-- or, what do you call them-- strollers, or commuting on a bicycle. So it's definitely important to realise that improving accessibility to content is an improvement to everyone. Alright. Before we dive into the nitty gritty, let's look at, in broad terms, what makes content accessible? The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines set out four principles. And it's interesting that this organisation formed the basis of the ISO Accessible PDF/UA spec, and so the principles are both relevant to print and digital content. The audience must be able to perceive that the content is there, and not only to one sense, but to all the senses. It should be available as audio and, if necessary, as Braille. How a reading device is operated is not always quite the domain of content publishers directly because you're not manufacturing these devices. However, when publishing to accessibility devices, the content must contain the correct features in order for these devices to convert the content on the fly, for example, to audio. For sight-impaired audiences, creating understanding could mean inserting or adding alternative text for complex tables and images. This also goes to how content is written-- language level, sentence complexity, and perhaps breaking text into smaller paragraphs. I think, by now, publishers recognise the document formats and data structures which have persisted through various publishing technologies and in, what I feel is, over generations, which are now considered robust. And as much as many may sometimes shy away from it, XML based content has consistently provided durability, scalability, and flexibility. It is no coincidence that for all the shiny interfaces and widgets in InDesign there's still support for XML under the hood. Or that Microsoft Word, although we kind of disagree on what-- well, not that I disagree, but that it has a form of XML built into it. With these principles in mind, Typefi leverages InDesign to include accessibility in its outputs. But let's have a look at why organisations are adding accessibility to the content. Well, we can start with, perhaps, just the ethics of it. The UN has defined accessibility to information and communication technology as a fundamental right. And as curators and custodians of knowledge, there is a certain obligation to ensure that content is available to everyone, irrespective of what physical challenges they might have. So if the ethics doesn't motivate publishers, let's have a look at money. How would you like to grow your potential market by 10%? Well, according to the World Health Organization 2018 report on blindness and vision impairment, 826 million people have near vision impairment. That's roughly the population of Europe, give or take Brexit. Further to this, the world's population is aging, and visual and hearing impairments are more pronounced in the population over 60. In my case, over 50. And with the increasing birth rates, there are more children with visual impairments. But, for me, the staggering statistic from the World Blind Union is that 90%-- 9-0%-- of published material is not available to the visually impaired. All right. So now that we have had the carrot, I guess there's always the stick. Increasingly, countries have either adopted and/or implemented legal treaties and frameworks or created their own. In the US, Section 508 is a set of regulations and standards which prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities. It is part of the original Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and was refreshed just in January 2017, and requires, I quote, \"telecommunication products and services to be accessible to people with disabilities.\" And this includes, and I quote again, \"any and all digital communications that a company under Section 508 jurisdiction creates must be 508 compliant, and this includes website content, emails, computer software, gaming systems, apps, and PDFs, versions of traditionally printed assets.\" So the act not only applies to federal agencies, but anyone doing business with a federal agency. So this has very far-reaching effects. On the international side, the Marrakesh VIP Treaty-- the full name-- the Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works by Visually Impaired Persons and Persons with Disability, is a treaty, which, I quote again, \"requires contracting parties to introduce a standard set of limitations and exceptions to copyright rules in order to permit reproduction, distribution, and making available of published works in the foremost design to be accessible to VIPs, and to permit the exchange of these works across borders by organisations that serve the beneficiaries.\" The treaty was adopted in June 2013 and came into force by eligible parties at the end of September 2016. And, to date, there are 54 contracting parties. In essence, the treaty allows for the creation of an exception to the copyright laws to allow an accessible version of the contents to be created by somebody other than the rights holder. And as publishers, I think it is in your best interest to create an accessible content upfront, or at least an accessible version of your content. While some of these are perhaps not strictly enforceable by legislation, it does show that adoption is growing and being taken rather seriously. There are a lot of similarities across the different regions, and would be worth chatting to your legal partners to figure out which of these entities will have an effect on your organisation, and a best strategy for future. So to give you an indication of the extent of the adoption of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the areas in red are countries which have signed the convention and either have a protocol in place or ratified to have a protocol in place. There are a few countries who have not signed, but, by far, the majority have endorsed the concept of accessibility as a fundamental human right. While it appears that there is a wave of legislation heading standards' way, the underlying gist, as Article 9 of the Union Convention of Rights of Persons with Disabilities states, and I quote, \"to promote the design, development, production, and distribution of accessible information at an early stage, so that technologies and systems become accessible at a minimum cost.\" And this point-- this is the key point-- at a minimum cost. It can be done, and we will show you how Typefi can help you accomplish this. As standards organisations working with regional and international industries, regulators, governments, et cetera, is vital for standards organisations' contents to be accessible and in line with countries and regions treaties, frameworks, and legislation. With Typefi's advances in automating documented work flow and using InDesign's accessibility features, content can be made available in more ways than ever before. And there is a growing market to accessible content. And a large part of the market, as we heard earlier, is not being serviced. So trying to bolt on accessibility at the end, after you have produced your final output, will, in many instances, result in redoing work and have rather limited success. With the introduction of anything new, it is important to get buy-in from the team, as everyone will be involved at some stage. Clearly communicating why accessibility is important-- the benefits to the readers, and to the community, and to your organisation. So look for someone within the organisation who can be a champion of the cause and will help build the momentum. A good idea is to set achievable and measurable goals for short, medium, and longer term. For example, a short-term goal could be just by starting to update your metadata. And we've heard about metadata frequently this morning. Or, adding alt text to images, and then build on, incrementally. So some accessibility is better than none. And introducing just one accessible element can have far-reaching effects on your readers and be closer to being more compliant. Identify a success story where one of your products has made a difference to someone and share that with the team or the rest of the organisation. This certainly helps team members to see purpose in creating accessible content and has a tangible effect. And, lastly, examine your content. What does it sound like when it is read by an electronic reader? Could it benefit the reader if long paragraphs were broken down into smaller chunks? And did you identify the correct language format for the content? So we'll be speaking-- well, I'll be speaking, about multiple outputs. And I'd just like to briefly explain what these are, in terms of accessibility. So the PDF/UA is an informal name for the ISO 14289 spec, which the international standard for accessibility of PDF technology. UA stands for universal accessibility. More and more developers, government authorities, and other organisations are expected to accept PDF/UA as an absolute requirement for universally acceptable PDF documents. Over and above the standard for print, accessible features such as bookmarks and alternative text for images are included as part of the InDesign and Typefi outputs when included in your setups. So the HTML and CSS are well-known formats for the web, and also, the underlying digital format for EPUBs. Moving on to EPUB, which is a digital package containing HTML CSS to render the content, along with-- and if they're required in the publication, images, video, and audio. There are a few other EPUB specific files which holds information about the metadata, and determines what the reading order is, and a table of contents. So EPUB has evolved over the years. And 9, version 3, with read aloud capabilities and, in some instances, live Braille. And, lastly, Daisy is a read-aloud format and used with specialised voice-over digital devices. So I'll have a look at accessibility features and elements in a little more detail in the next couple of slides. But first, I'd like to offer three steps to implementing the accessibility strategy. There is a clever analogy, which Chandi mentioned in one of his previous talks, of baking a delicious cake. For example, a carrot and walnut cake. And then trying to remove all the walnuts at the end because some of your guests have nut allergies. And I was thinking about this. And I was thinking, well, with Typefi, we could bake three cakes at the same time, with the same ingredients, and pretty much the same effort, we could have nuts, extra nuts, and no nuts. So the tools and structures are available, and they've been around, actually, for a while. And any publisher who has converted any content to a structured XML format is already well on the path to providing accessibility. All right. So let's start baking this cake. So some of the ingredients you'll need, you probably already have, it's just not part of your content yet. And here are some examples. Some metadata, which allows systems to recognise your publication and that your publication contains accessibility elements which, in turn, also aids discoverability through different digital platforms. Alternative text for images so that people with visual impairments can hear a description of the image. Typefi fields are place holders for information which can be reused over and over in different contexts. For example, an ISBN number will appear in the copyright page, but also as one of the document identifiers in the metadata. So instead of inserting content twice, you just insert it once and reuse. Your content will need to be well-structured, and not only to optimise automation, but also so that your documents reading order can be well-defined and TOCs easily generated. And that reading order is what the audio reading devices use in order to speak the content. So once we've collected the ingredients, we now need to build the recipe. We'll have a look at the recipe. And this stage is how and where the various ingredients or elements are needed to add accessibility, and where they're implemented. So this table is just a simple example of showing where some accessibility elements can be introduced into a production workflow. As you can see, the TOC is ticked in both InDesign template and content columns. And this is just to illustrate that the TOC can be set up and generated either before reaching InDesign or by InDesign. So there's no definitive way of doing this. And I recommend that you look at your content, your organisation structure, what resources and workflows, and see how and where you can include accessibility with minimal impact. So, for example, with Typefi Writer, metadata can conveniently be added at the authoring stage by including fields in your manuscript. And the content of these fields will travel through to your final output. Or, if you're using an XML as a source content, Typefi transforms can be created to harmonise input data. So again, it travels through your workflow and in your output. So to grow your readership and reach your audience, including alternative outputs must, at some point, be included. So choose one output first and then add further output formats. For example, ensuring a simple thing, like ensuring bookmarks and alternative text to your current PDF output, and then add, possibly, a large print output or an EPUB output. Here, we have three Typefi actions showing how a document is created, exported to PDF, and then the metadata is updated in the PDF, all in a single workflow. Remember, Article 9 of the UN Convention of the Right of Persons with Disability talks about promoting production of accessible information at an early stage so the technologies and systems can become accessible at a minimum cost. And I think this is an example of that. Typefi takes this to heart. And publishers are able to develop accessible content upfront, and allow the Typefi system to transform the content into accessible formats. To go into a little bit more detail on how we bake this accessibility cake, if you are using Word as your source documents-- and many publishers still do-- Typefi Writer is Microsoft Word-driven with added tools to help structure documents and publish directly from Word to EPUB, all of your outputs. But there's no requirement or preference to use Word. The choice is up to the standards organisation in consideration to the existing input content files, your existing workflows, and your organisation's production process. If you're working with XML content as an input, you can also add directly into your XML files, or as a separate file, and a data merge and/ or transform can be added as an action in the Typefi workflow. Alt text can be added when inserting images with Microsoft Word. Alt tags form part of your source data and so they're conveniently kept together. MathML is supported with Typefi and produces live math-- math as text, not images-- for all your output types. By using MathML, you have the option of adjusting the style and size of the equations in your InDesign templates, and future proofing your content as it is now in a structured format. Conditional items allow you to selectively output sections that can be set per output, and whether or not they're needed. So once you've assembled all the ingredients, the next step is mixing it all together, according to the recipe. And like baking, sometimes the sequence is important. Typefi uses InDesign as a composition engine. And with that, you have access to all accessibility features Adobe has built into InDesign, its flagship publication makeup tool with exceptional support for the technical requirements for providing accessibility in digital formats. This means that with minimum effort, you are able to create accessible documents. As the template is an InDesign document, it is a familiar tool for many designers and can be reused over and over again with various content file or type file workflows. There is an underlying layer of structural metadata which needs to be added to content to allow devices to interpret the type of content and how to present it to the reader. This could be text, Braille, or voiceover or to repurpose content to another format. This layer is often referred to as semantic structure, and is generally about applying logical sections to chunks of content, chapter, part, prelims, and meta, or right down to a granular level, such as headings, subheadings, lists, and tables. Typefi uses InDesign's accessibility setups and settings of various documents' elements along with the Typefi designer tools, available as a plug-in for InDesign. Once they are set up in your template, they will be present in all your outputs produced by the Typefi workflow, adding necessary semantic tags to text such as H1 for chapter and section headings, or H2 for the next level heading, et cetera. Properly identifying which predominant language for your publication is especially important for digital content. So machines use this identifier to determine which language and accent to use when reading your content. While reading French with an English accent or the other way around could be funny, it soon becomes really irritating when you need to absorb the information. Language can also be identified down to a word level. And this will be helpful in quoting text in another language. Adding EPUB type attributes for aiding accessible EPUB threes with additional structural tagging. The way web accessibility initiative for tagging for rich content and interfaces which assistive technologies can understand. Setting up a table of contents-- so various TOCs to aid navigation. Ensure table items are not converted to images and remain as live text. It's very tempting to retain layouts of complex tables by saving them as an image and placing them back into your publication, into your digital content. If there's no alternative, a good description by alternative text will be necessary to provide some information to the content of the table. Word tables and the styling is supported by Typefi workflow. Leaving a table as text also gives the opportunity to present a table in a more cohesive manner. Merging blank cells in the first column of a table will reduce the amount of times a screen reader will iterate through the cells and read each one, even if it's blank. Hyperlink cross-references are available for readers to navigate through the content. Of course, the styling of these hyperlinked items can be adjusted from within Typefi InDesign template, and gives you full control over the look and feel. Anchor images as part of the text so they remain in the correct position with the content and reflow when the content is resized, as those who have produced EPUBs will understand. And as alt text has been added during the authoring stage, the alt text will be added to the images and included in the exporting. By including the above settings, PDF outputs will be structured and properly tagged. And with the correct setups, as above, once again, Typefi will bake this straight into your outputs. And as we are working with an InDesign template, it can be used over and over again for all your content. Typefi is able to produce accessible content for all your outputs. Right. And the last step is putting it all together and baking. The Typefi workflow is made up of interchangeable modular actions which perform specific tasks. So an XSLT transform is one of these actions and is a powerful and efficient method of updating and harmonising data before it reaches InDesign. For example, while InDesign has a TOC feature, it can be limited. And when trying to build multiple conditional TOCs, for example, you cannot yet build a TOC across only certain sections within a file, certain files within a book, unless you have unique paragraph style names. However, by pre-building the TOC using an XSLT transform, you can pre-build multiple TOCs, and once it's in InDesign, just update the page numbers. So that's quite important for generating a list of tables, list of illustrations, and those sorts of things. A key feature of InDesign is the ability to automate manual tasks via scripting. And Typefi have deployed a number of scripts for tasks or features not yet built into InDesign or to meet specific client requirements. For example, inserting page numbers which match the print edition into the content, either as hidden items or displayed, and then generate a page list for TOC. This has become an accessibility requirement by one of the major e-book distributors, as it complements prints and allows readers to synchronise with readers of physical books. We realise that not all PDFs are created equal. And for this, we have a workflow action which allows the manipulation of PDFs. This comes in handy when producing content for different circumstances. And instead of rerunning the entire job for each variation, the PDF action can perform various actions on the outputted PDF. So some of these would be duplicating a PDF, adding and updating metadata within the PDF, inserting pages, removing, splitting, or combining PDFs, or auto-marking pages to create a preview version of your document. So while we have given a lot of attention to digital outputs, there are a number of opportunities to make print more accessible. Well, as long as you're working with InDesign templates, you can create a large format print version of your template and flow your content through it at the same time as other templates to produce simultaneous print, large print, and digital versions. Each Typefi InDesign template can cater for different needs. For example, large font, high contrast, or specialised fonts better suited for readers with dyslexia. Alternative print formats can be produced on demand but still only use the same content by choosing the appropriate workflow to produce the desired output. So accessibility is well documented online. And I've selected just some resources, which I think are particularly useful when starting out on implementing accessibility. In closing, I'd just like to reiterate that by adding accessibility, you'll be taking your content from unusable to usable for some people, or at the very least, more usable for everyone. Thank you very much. [APPLAUSE] "}
Resources
- Accessible Publishing with Typefi
- Ace, the Accessibility Checker for EPUB (by DAISY)
- W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
- Inclusive Publishing (a DAISY Consortium initiative)
- Accessible Books Consortium
- DAISY Schema.org Accessibility Metadata
- Floe Inclusive Learning Design Handbook
- Accessible PDF
Damian Gibbs
Solutions Consultant | Typefi
Damian started out as an apprentice typesetter over 20 years ago at a leading South African educational publisher, and from the start was curious about opportunities that digital technologies bring to publishing. He transitioned to general market publishing and eventually became a service provider to local and offshore publishers covering a diverse range of publishing markets, all requiring varying workflows and output requirements.
Damian has extensive experience working with publishers to use evolving technologies and innovative digital publishing products to improve workflows, and to transition from pure print to digital outputs such as web, e-books, and CMS publishing.