Towards an Accessible Digital Publishing Ecosystem

Towards an accessible digital publishing ecosystem

Cristina Mussinelli Secretary General

Accessible Europe - Accessibility in Education 5th December 2019 The Foundation

The Foundation is a non profit organization created in 2014 by the Italian Publisher Association (AIE) along with the Italian Blind Union (UICI)

Recently Associazione Italiana Dislessia (AID) and Biblioteca dei Ciechi Regina Margherita joined as institutional members

LIA Foundation aims at promoting books and reading, in all its forms, both traditional and digital, through education, information, awareness and research in this area.

The Foundation intends to, in particular:

• promote reading and expand access for visual impaired people to publishing products through research and technological innovation;

• spread a culture of accessibility through consulting and training involving all the actors of the supply- chain: publishers distributors, booksellers, manufacturers of e-reading solutions HW and SW;

• deliver training for users in the field of digital reading.

Fondazione LIA is member of:

Participates in the main international working groups to define the standards and to promote solutions for the accessibility of publications • W3C – Publishing Business and Publishing Working Group • Transition to accessible EPUB e Reading Systems • DIAGRAM standard & TIES Production group • ISO OT UNI/CT 014/SC 04 "Automazione e documentazione"

More than 24,000 born accessible ebooks verified and certified by Fondazione LIA

Fiction and non-fiction: best sellers, for children, novels, literary awards…

+ 400 new titles each month

76 imprints small, medium and large publishers

21/11/2019 © Fondazione LIA 7 Different reading options and solutions Different types of print disability

TRADITIONAL DIGITAL

With display Braille

1 e-book = 1 single file with high editorial quality

MANY DIFFERENT ONE PROCESS PROCESSES ONE FOR FOR SEVERAL EACH USER USERS

«Born Accessible» means to define a specific procedure aimed at defining accessibility check (internal or external) of the publications and to adopt international standard metadata schema distributing them along the value chain and providing to end users the description of the accessibility featured available in the publications.

• Complex layouts (columns, reading order, etc)

• Many different professionals involved in the production workflows

• Image descriptions of different kinds of illustrations

• Formulas (math, chemistry, etc)

• Audio/text sync and karaoke

• Conceptual maps

• BICA - Pilot project on creation of born accessible textbooks + training courses on digital reading for print impaired students

• Alternative image descriptions using Artificial intelligence and Machine Learning

• Smart speakers

Hi LIA, may you read me the list of the new accessible titles?

“E-Books for all: towards an accessible publishing ecosystem”

It aims to be an agile manual, providing an overview of the different aspects involved, for all the players in the book value chain.

It identifies the role each actor may play in the accessible digital publishing ecosystem, describes the critical elements to be considered and provides the relevant references to the international standard accessibility specifications or guidelines to be followed. https://bit.ly/2Vzzjnl

[email protected]