How Publishers Are Making Ebooks More Accessible & Discoverable

Last week Book Business hosted a webinar on creating more accessible and discoverable content through improved content architectures and workflows. Publishers are improving book metadata and standards so that both digital and physical books can be found more easily and meet the needs of readers with disabilities. The speakers on the webinar  encouraged publishers to start thinking about discovery and accessibility while creating EPUB3 files as opposed to tackling these issues during the marketing stage.

With the proliferation of digital content, the need for more accessible and discoverable books is only growing, said George Kerscher during the webinar. Kerscher is the president of the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF) and secretary-general of the DAISY Consortium. He is working to meet the growing demand for accessible books by developing industry-wide accessibility standards for EPUB3. During the webinar, Kerscher mentioned his efforts to form a group dedicated to sharing best practices that help publishers carry out the accessibility standards established by the W3C. You can learn more about that effort here.

For more resources on creating accessible ebooks, check out the BISG’s accessibility working group and the latest news on EPUB3 from the DAISY Consortium.

You can also view the complete webinar on accessibility and discovery on-demand until January 21^st.