Search Results

Relevant Acts Ireland is subject to the European Accessibility Act (EAA) and the EU Web Accessibility Directive and this has been implemented into Irish law through the European Union (Accessibility Requirements of Products and Services) Regulations 2023, usu...

Relevant Acts The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is the legislation that states both ‘state and local government entities’ (Title II) and private/business entities that are open to the public (Title III) cannot discriminate against those with a disabil...

Relevant Acts The Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (DDA) is the main legislation that drives digital accessibility compliance, through prohibiting discrimination against people with disabilities. The DDA prohibits discrimination against disabled individuals...

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Versions 2.0 2.1 and 2.2 Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) standards are the most commonly used standards that are mandated in many countries’ legal requirements. WCAG is based on web pages and so it is b...

EPUB Accessibility 1.1 addresses two key needs in the EPUB ecosystem: evaluation and certification of accessible EPUB Publications; discovery of the accessible qualities of EPUB Publications. This specification sets formal requirements to meet t...

ISO 14289-1, better known as PDF/UA (Portable Document Format, Universal Accessibility), is aimed at everyone involved in creating a PDF. It is based on the PDF standard ISO 32000-1 (also known as Adobe PDF 1.7) and directly references that. It sets minimum re...

DAISY - Digital Accessible Information System Digital Accessible Information System (DAISY), also known as ANSI/NISO Z39.86-2005 (R2012), is a digital talking book standard which offers a flexible and navigable reading experience for people who are blind or p...

There are two ways that metadata accompanies a publication. In the first are digital publication formats that directly embed accessibility metadata (EPUB and PDF). In the second are external metadata record formats (ONIX and MARC) that accompany a digital publ...

DocBook DocBook is a markup language for publishing computing and other technical complex scientific documents including books. It allows you to convert one source format into multiple target formats. PreTeXt PreTeXt is a markup language that captures the s...

A VPAT stands for Voluntary Product Accessibility Template, and they are free templates provided by the Information Technology Industry Council (ITI) that help you to audit and describe the accessibility of your content. A completed VPAT is referred to as an A...

Having a documented policy about how you want the organisation to handle accessibility might be a useful tool. If your press has more individuals involved, uses external partners more often or doesn't yet have a strong organisational buy in for accessibility, ...

If not already, including accessibility requirements within author submission guidelines is recommended, and even if this is already something in place, then this guidance can help optimise the advice you give to authors. Authors are often the best people to h...

Mailing Lists The following are mailing lists where you can contact groups of digital accessibility experts with any specific technical queries.  PAAG UK - PAAG@groups.io LIS-accessibility - LIS-ACCESSIBILITY@JISCMAIL.AC.UK Digital Accessibility Regulation...

These Principles serve as a statement of our ethical values concerning accessibility within small publishing organisations. They are high level and idealistic, rather than prescriptive or technical requirements, and can serve as drivers of behaviour or justifi...

The following are a short list of service providers, who will certify ebook files as meeting accessibility standards. Benetech’s Global Certificated Accessible (GCA) certification suite of services will evaluate the accessibility of EPUBs against WCAG and the...

While auditing for legal minimum levels of accessibility can produce quantitative data about how accessible your content is, there are other options. If your press is exempt from legislation, or your values and mission includes a fuller consideration of a rese...

Where do I get started with accessible eBooks? We can help. There are many things you are already doing that you can translate now into essential documents that will help your press engage with accessibility. In the short term this will enable you to communic...

In the EU, microenterprises with less than 10 employees and an annual turnover less than EUR 2 million or an annual balance sheet totalling less than EUR 2 million are exempt from the EAA accessibility requirements. Most other parts of the world require an an...

A Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) is a free template where you record the accessibility of your ebooks on a table. They are not a legal requirement and do not need to be published openly, but they help to communicate with libraries about the ac...

An accessibility statement is a publicly available statement that describes your organisational commitment to accessibility, the current accessibility of your ebooks, and your future plans for improving this. An accessibility statement is a legal requirement i...