George Kerscher, Charles LaPierre & Rachel Comerford explain how publishers can now claim conformance to WCAG 2.0. “Certified by Benetech” guarantees the conformance claims are true. The process follows the approved EPUB Accessibility Standard.

1. Charles LaPierre, M.Eng., Technical Lead,
Born Accessible and DIAGRAM; Benetech
George Kerscher, Ph.D., Chief Innovations Officer,
DAISY Consortium; Senior Advisor, Benetech
Finally, Certified Accessible Educational
Materials from Publishers
Rachel Comerford, Director of Content
Standards, Macmillan Learning

2. Born Accessible EPUB
That Meets the Baseline
for Accessibility
George Kerscher

3. Page 3
Standards at the Core of
Accessibility
● World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
– HTML 5, CSS, SVG
● Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
● WCAG 2.0
● International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF)
– http://www.idpf.org/
– EPUB the digital publishing standard
– EPUB Accessibility Conformance and Discovery
1.0 Specification

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● For the last three years the W3C has run a Digital
Publishing Interest Group
● The merger has placed EPUB under the domain
of W3C
● IDPF members will be given reduced fees for two
years
● 82% of members supported the combination
IDPF and W3C Merger

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● Adoption of EPUB 3 has been outstanding in most digital
publishing sectors
● EPUB 3.1 is an approved recommendation
– http://www.idpf.org/epub/31/spec/epub-spec.html
● Included is EPUB Accessibility 1.0
– http://www.idpf.org/epub/a11y/accessibility.html
● Conformance and Discovery Requirements for EPUB
Publications
● First ever spec to enable accessibility certification
– This establishes the baseline
● Important: We want to be practical in that publishers should
readily be able to produce accessible EPUB from their normal
production process
EPUB within the World Wide Web
Consortium (W3C)

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● Requires accessibility conformance in the EPUB
publication
● Builds on WCAG 2.0 with some additional publishing-
specific items
● in the USA WCAG 2.0 “AA” is generally recommended
● “conforms To” metadata pointing to “A,” “AA,” or “AAA”
Accessibility metadata must be included
● Interestingly: publishers have actively participated in the
EPUB Accessibility Spec development and have been
updating their production process to support accessibility.
Baseline Features

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● The Digital Publishing Interest Group in the W3C has
produced an ARIA 1.1 module to help add some Digital
Publishing semantics to ARIA
● Digital Publishing WAI-ARIA Module 1.0
– https://www.w3.org/TR/dpub-aria-1.0/
● This is currently under review and has not yet been
adopted as a recommendation
● Sample of the proposed new Roles:
– doc-abstract
– doc-appendix
– doc-chapter
– doc-introduction
W3C DPUB’s ARIA 1.1 Module

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● All headings must be marked in the HTML as headings
(Critical for navigation)
● All textual content must use HTML text markup, e.g.,
paragraphs, block quotes, list items
● All content must be in a logical reading order
● Images are marked as decorative, described in
surrounding text or captions, or have “alt” text
● If you want a fancy heading and use an image, remember
to surround the image with the heading markup and use
alt text (remember you can do very cool things these days
with CSS)
Concrete Examples of Some MUSTS

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Metadata Requirements to Be Compliant
● EPUBs wishing to be conformant MUST:
– include accessibility discovery metadata
– include the following [schema.org] accessibility
metadata
• accessMode
• accessibilityFeature
• accessibilityHazard
• accessibilitySummary

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● Specifications are at a high level and techniques are
concrete
● WCAG and EPUB techniques are maintained
independently of specifications
● As support in Reading Systems evolve, the techniques will
improve
● http://www.idpf.org/epub/a11y/techniques/techniques.html
● https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20-TECHS/Overview.html
● TTS & Braille: The techniques ensures that Text-to-
Speech can be used to present the information. Also, this
supports text being sent to a refreshable braille display
Supporting Techniques Updated
Frequently

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● Certify that digital books (and all other publications) meet
the Baseline
● Self-certification
– Sad Story: What happened to Voluntary Product Accessibility
Template (VPAT)?
– Would you have a fox guard the henhouse?
– DAISY is building the EPUB Accessibility Conformance Checker
– Auto checking must be supplemented by human inspection
Accelerating Publisher Adoption:
Certification of EPUB Publications

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● Excellent accessibility metadata required to be
present in the EPUB package
● Accessibility metadata supports
• Born accessible
• Find accessible
• Buy Accessible
● Questions: Any questions on the Standards side?
Accelerating Publisher Adoption:
Conformance and Certification of EPUB Publications

13. Benetech Certification
Pilot
Charles LaPierre

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Born Accessible: Certified by Benetech
● Benetech is piloting the certification process
● A documented process for certification must
be established and followed
● Publisher materials are reviewed and
remediated
● Long term process improvements would be
recommended to publishers

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Certification Metadata in EPUB
Publications
● How to find certified content in the future:
– certifiedBy: Specifies the name of the party that
certified the content. The certifier of the content could
be the same party that created the EPUB publication,
but can also be a third-party accessibility certifier.
– certifierCredential: Identifies a credential or badge
that establishes the authority of the party identified in
the certifiedBy property to certify content is accessible.
– certifierReport: Provides a link to an accessibility
report created by the party identified in the certifiedBy
property.
– conformsTo: WCAG-A, -AA, or -AAA

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Tested Software for Reading EPUB
● Both the EPUB and the Reading System must be
accessible.
● A perfectly accessible EPUB with a terrible Reading
System does not get you there
● Likewise a great Reading System with an inaccessible
EPUB yields zero
● The answer is to test Reading Systems with perfect
EPUBs
● It is necessary to test using a wide range of Assistive
Technologies
● http://www.epubtest.org/
– Note: VitalSource Bookshelf at 100%

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Buy Accessible
● Procurement MUST focus on “Buy Accessible”
● “Buy Accessible” - Demand Certified Accessible
EPUB 3
● All content must be certified. Point them to
“Certified by Benetech” initiative.

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Role of DSS Office Supporting Born
Accessible
● Guide students toward great reading systems and
certified accessible content
● Support students who need more than what is in
the baseline

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Benetech Pilot – EPUB Accessibility
Certification
● Currently working with Macmillan Learning, five
other publishers, and one conversion vendor
● In depth evaluation of a sample of complex EPUB
books from each
● Generate a detailed accessibility report for each
title

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Sample Pilot: Summary
Title: Road Runner - Not a Myth
Publisher: Acme Inc.
Author(s):Wiley Coyote Sr.
Package Metadata (Required): FAIL
Page and Publication: FAIL
Page Navigation: PASS
Media Overlays Playback: FAIL
Overall 1.0 Compliant: FAIL
Born Accessible Score: 25.5%
Overall WCAG Compliance Reached: FAIL
EPUB Complexity Score: 5 - Very Complex

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Sample Pilot: Born Accessible Scores
Image Accessibility: 39% WCAG FAIL
Audio Accessibility: 22% WCAG FAIL
Video Accessibility: 0% WCAG FAIL
HTML Tags: 29% WCAG FAIL
General Accessibility: 29% WCAG FAIL
Language: 50% WCAG Level-A
Structured Navigation:17% WCAG FAIL
Links: 50% WCAG Level-A
Lists: 50% WCAG FAIL
Tables: 0% WCAG FAIL
Notes: 67% WCAG Level-A
Java Script: 0% WCAG FAIL
Package Metadata (Optional): 0%
DPUB ARIA (Future): N/A
Born Accessible Total Score 25.5%

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Accessibility Pilot Results

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Publishers Perspective
● Rachel Comerford

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Process is Everything
Publisher’s processes are at the heart of the Certification

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How we Integrated New Standards
● Get involved in working groups – it’s a chance to share
your solutions and learn from others
● Standards groups provided specifications but it was up to
us to develop implementation guides based on our needs
– V1 took 6 months to build
– updates are coming out every 2-3 months based on feedback
● Developed a validator based on open source resources
and our implementation guide
– Update with every implementation guide update
● Established a checklist for non-automated QA and
educated team members on what to look for

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Sharing Responsibility
● Art – Develop all art to have proper contrast, readable text
● Design – Ensure read order is clearly indicated
● Authors – Provide guidance about pedagogical intention
for digital conversion
● Editors – Communicate with authors about focus and
development
● Compositor – Apply publisher standards, give feedback on
gaps
● Quality Assurance – Automated and manual checking of
everything developed

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Addressing Complexity
● Text with markup
● Complex image layouts
● Marginal elements
– Texts contain a large quantity of pedagogical material in the margin
● MathML
– Reader compatibility is not standard
– Expensive and difficult to write alt text
● ChemML
– Reader compatibility is rare
– Expensive and difficult to write alt text
● Graphic Novel
– All image text

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Why Are We Doing This?
● ‘Certified by Benetech’ advantages
– 3rd party confirmation of accessibility standards
– Assurance for students and adopters
– Easy to roll up to administrators
– Gives us feedback to pass on to vendors about the quality of their
work
– Provides internal confidence about the quality of what we’re
delivering
– Helps identify for schools what errors are addressed and what
warnings are relevant
– Most importantly: Shows us what we’re missing and what we
have left to learn

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EPUB Accessibility 1.0 (Specification)
EPUB Accessibility Techniques 1.0 (Supplemental)
WCAG 2.0 (Specification)
BISG: Quick Start Guide to Accessible Publishing
DIAGRAM Center: Image Description Guidelines
Poet Image Description Training Module
Helpful Resources for Publishers

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THANK YOU
Questions?
George Kerscher
georgek@benetech.org
Charles LaPierre
charlesl@benetech.org
Rachel Comerford
Rachel.comerford@macmillan.com