Reading a publication is a very personal experience. For most of us this is routine, and give little consideration to how we obtained the title before we read it. We may go to a bookstore, search for the title to purchase online, or have the title selected for us by an instructor for a class.
Now consider you are blind and rely on an assistive technology. You need that technology to assist you in the purchase process as well as to read the publication. You may wonder: will my screen reader work with this title; are there image descriptions that will be spoken to describe these images; are there page numbers which are accessible; is the reading order correct so I don't hear a caution after reading a paragraph which could be dangerous? All of these, and more accessibility concerns are potential issues consumers have when trying to purchase and ultimately read a digital publication.
The good news is more and more publishers are creating publications that are Born Accessible (i.e., accessible from the outset, not fixed later) and getting the accessibility validation or audit done by independent organizations.
This document proposes a shared framework for presenting publication accessibility metadata in a user-friendly manner, so as to offer the information to end users in a way that is easy for them to understand (even to the less technical) and consistent across different publications and different digital catalogs.
This document helps those who wish to render accessibility metadata directly to users understand how to represent machine-readable accessibility metadata in a user-friendly User Interface / User Experience (UI/UX).
This document presents high-level principles without going into technical issues related to the different metadata standards in the publishing industry.
Therefore, techniques are available that illustrate to developers how to retrieve data to show the information outlined in this document.
Metadata found either inside a digital publication or in a corresponding external record may have important accessibility information that helps end users find and determine if the publication can meet their specific accessibility needs.
All accessibility metadata is meant to be machine-readable – apart from the accessibility summary - in this way accessibility metadata can be extracted and displayed uniformly across different publications and localized to different user interface languages.
One important aspect is that the role of the Accessibility Summary metadata has changed in the latest version of the EPUB Accessibility specification, so a more in-depth analysis in the Accessibility summary section is recommended.
This document offers guidance on how to aggregate and display metadata to end users; these are not strict guidelines, but suggestions for providing a consistent experience for users through different portals. Different implementers may choose to implement these guidelines a slightly different way, some examples can be seen in the Implementations section of the document.
To assist developers in implementing these guidelines, in-depth notes are available to explain how to extract information from publishing industry metadata standards.
At the time of publishing this document the available techniques for metadata standards are:
The product details are giving precious information about usability of the book in relation with specifics needs. The following informations should always be displayed:
When the content creator does not provide any accessibility metadata for a publication, should still be shown the three pieces of information that should always be present (with an indication of whether the information is missing): Supports nonvisual reading, Visual adjustments and Conformance.
This document does not define the order in which to show the key accessibility information; each implementer can decide the preferred order for showing the accessibility information that follows.
This key information should always be shown displayed, even if there is no metadata (with the relevant wording).
Indicates whether all content required for comprehension can be consumed in text and therefore is fully available to assistive technologies and reading systems using text-to-speech or electronic braille functionality.
The term "electronic braille" and "refreshable braille" are used interchangeably, which denotes a device with pop-up pins to present the braille on a tactile screen.
This field answers whether nonvisual reading is possible, not possible, or unknown.
Digital publications with essential content included in non-textual form (such as graphs, tables or equations presented as images, videos, etc.) must include textual alternatives to ensure that users reading with other senses than sight (mainly auditory and tactile) have access to the same information as visual readers. These textual alternatives can include extended descriptions, transcripts, captions, etc. depending on the nature of the nonvisual content.
The examples are provided as lists of possible descriptive and compact explanations for flexibility of adoption.
This key information can be hidden if metadata is missing.
Indicates the presence of pre-recorded audio and specifies if this audio is standalone (an audiobook), accompanies text (embedded audio and video clips), or represents an alternative to the text (synchronized text-audio playback).
Audiobooks created for mainstream use provide important access for many users with disabilities even though they are not accessible to all. As they grow in popularity, audiobooks may provide more accessibility options in the future.
Some publications provide audio (including in video) in addition to text. In this case, it is important that the user gets informed as they may not be able to access all content in the book.
Some publications provide pre-recorded audio with text synchronization. Users with hearing impairments still can access the full content of these books.
The examples are provided as lists of possible descriptive and compact explanations for flexibility of adoption.
This key information should always be shown displayed, even if there is no metadata (with the relevant wording).
Indicates if users can modify the appearance of the text and the page layout according to the possibilities offered by the reading system.
This field answers whether visual adjustments are possible, not possible, or unknown.
Readers with visual impairments or cognitive disabilities need the ability to change the color of text and its background (contrast), the font family and font size used, as well as spacing between letters, words, sentences, or paragraphs.
Knowing that a publication can reflow to fit the reading system's display area is not sufficient to know that modifications to the font, spacing, and colors are possible or that the changes will not cause other readability issues (e.g., text being clipped by its container).
The examples are provided as lists of possible descriptive and compact explanations for flexibility of adoption.
This key information can be hidden if metadata is missing.
Indicates the presence of formulas, graphs, charts, and diagrams within the title and whether these are in an accessible format or available in an alternative form (e.g., whether formulas are navigable with assistive technologies, or whether extended descriptions are available for complex images).
This group should be displayed only if the metadata indicates the presence of formulas or charts and graphs within the title, otherwise it can be hidden.
The examples are provided as lists of possible descriptive and compact explanations for flexibility of adoption.
This key information can be hidden if metadata is missing.
Identifies any potential hazards (e.g., flashing elements, background sounds, and motion simulation) that could afflict physiologically sensitive users.
Unlike other accessibility properties, the presence of hazards can be expressed either positively or negatively. This is because users search for content that is safe for them as well as want to know when content is potentially dangerous to them.
This group should always be displayed. Indicate that no metadata is provided if that is the case.
The examples are provided as lists of possible descriptive and compact explanations for flexibility of adoption.
This key information should always be shown displayed, even if there is no metadata (with the relevant wording).
Identifies whether the digital publication meets internationally recognized conformance standards for accessibility.
Conformance metadata often uses terminology that most people will not understand, and therefore simple statements should be provided when EPUB accessibility and WCAG levels are identified.
If a publication identifies that there are accessibility problems, the statement should indicate that there are known accessibility limitations. If the publication does not include a conformance claim, the statement should indicate that conformance could not be determined.
In most cases, people will want to know more about the conformance and certification of the publication. The certifying organization should be identified along with their credentials and placed immediately after the conformance statement.
The following list explains the meaning of each recommended conformance statement.
The publication contains a conformance claim that it meets the EPUB Accessibility and WCAG 2 Level AA standard.
The publication contains a conformance claim that it meets the EPUB Accessibility and WCAG 2 Level A standard.
The publication contains a conformance claim that is not to the EPUB Accessibility standard.
The publication does not meet the requirements of EPUB Accessibility or WCAG 2 Level A.
The publication does not include a conformance claim.
The following information can be placed in a section that shows the details of the conformance information.
Three examples are provided for the conformance statement, one shows a statement that meets recommended accessibility standards and a second that meets the minimum level. The third shows a publication with unknown accessibility.
The examples present the conformance statement, the certifier, the certifiers credentials and is followed by the detailed conformance information section
This key information can be hidden if metadata is missing.
The accessibility summary was intended (in EPUB Accessibility 1.0) to describes in human-readable prose the accessibility features present in the publication as well as any shortcomings. From EPUB Accessibility version 1.1 the accessibility summary became a human-readable summary of the accessibility that complements, but does not duplicate, the other discoverability metadata.
It is a free-form field that allows authors to describe the additional information to the accessible properties of the resource.
Due to its nature, no specific processing of the content is required; it is sufficient to extract the text from the metadata and display it to end users.
This key information can be hidden if metadata is missing.
This section lists additional metadata categories that can help users better understand the accessibility characteristics of digital publications. These are for metadata that do not fit into the other categories or are rarely used in trade publishing.
Additional accessibility information includes a wide range of information related to the publication's content. Therefore, the features are grouped so that the presentation is more understandable to end users.
For information on any structuring aids that facilitate use of a resource (e.g., annotations, ARIA).
For information on provisions in the content that enable reading in alternative access modes (e.g., closed captions, ruby annotations, sign language, transcript).
For information on ways that the content has been enhanced for improved auditory or visual clarity (e.g., high contrast display).
For information on content that is available in tactile form (e.g., tactile content, tactile graphic, tactile objects).
For information on specific types of content present in the digital publication (e.g., text on visual, music on visual).
For information that does not fall into one of the preceding categories (e.g., timing control and color dependent).
The guidelines for presenting accessibility metadata detailed in this document are intended to improve the user experience when readers browse the catalog entry for a publication. However, accessibility metadata also has a vital role to play in helping readers discover publications that are accessible for them. Publication providers, such as vendors and libraries, are encouraged to create searching and filtering tools that interpret accessibility metadata to aid in discovery. (A full discussion of search and filtering issues is out of scope for this document, but this section provides some guidance until further research can be carried out.)
We are still doing research on this topic, anyone who would like to contribute ideas or feedback from end users can do so by commenting on issue #196.
In these guidelines, we have used simple language to communicate the meaning of the metadata values. Many people have contributed to development of the words and phrases we have selected. We intend to provide a mechanism for the publishing community to provide translations that localizes the strings for equally effective communication in many languages. We understand that simply translating the strings is not enough; the subtle meaning of the words and phrases of accessibility concepts must be localized for maximum understanding.
At this time, we have not decided on the technical mechanism for providing the localization. Our next steps are to work on the techniques and identify the strings in English that are associated with the metadata values. We will probably look at localizing for French and Italian before deciding on the technical approach.
We want to alert the community that the translation and localization of the information to be communicated is under development and will be delivered as soon as possible.
The full approach TBD
These guidelines provide a general framework and makes suggestions on the display of accessibility metadata. It is not a normative description of what must be done. It is instructive to provide examples of implementations from the community.
Linked below are static pages that show real-life implementations. We have captured these examples from organization's websites that have agreed to allow us to showcase the work they have done to display accessibility metadata.
Links TBD