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Review Publisher Files for Accessibility

Posted: Thu Feb 08, 2018 2:33 pm
by farrah
NNELS receives tons of files from publishers, mainly in EPUB format (either EPUB 2 or EPUB 3). We would like to know what you think of the accessibility of these publisher files. Any feedback you have will help us help the publishers make better books! If you're interested in reviewing publisher EPUB files for accessibility, let us know and we'll send you a batch.

Knowledge of HTML 5, CSS, and EPUB 3 is useful, but not required.

Re: Review Publisher Files for Accessibility

Posted: Tue Feb 20, 2018 10:20 am
by farrah
Would anyone be interested in reviewing an EPUB for accessibility? We have 3 books provided by Breton Books, a publisher based in Nova Scotia, who has asked for feedback on the accessibility of their ebooks.

If you're willing to take a look at one of their books, and provide feedback in the form of a short 1-2 page report, leave a message in this forum and I'll send you the file.

Books to review: Brief Accessibility Report:
The goal of the report is to help the publisher understand how accessible their book is, and to provide some suggestions on how they can make their book more usable.

Please include in your report the tools you have used to read the books (i.e. the reading systems and assistive technologies used).

Some suggestions on how to structure your report are below. Feel free to talk about other any other issues you come across.
  • Navigation - Is there a well-structured table of contents? Is there page navigation? Can you seamlessly skip to and from footnotes and endnotes? Are all sections identified with headings? Are other parts of the book identified as needed?
  • Images - Are images adequately described?
  • Text - Is all text understandable and appropriately identified? What about foreign language text? Quotations? Poetry? Lists? Questions and Answers, etc.?
  • Tables - Are tables used correctly? Are they navigable? Are they adequately described?

Re: Review Publisher Files for Accessibility

Posted: Thu Feb 22, 2018 12:46 pm
by rmarion
Hello:

As I have had some experience doing basic website accessibility testing, I would be interested in looking at the 3 files you mentioned here. Any time from Next week on would be fine with me.

Re: Review Publisher Files for Accessibility

Posted: Thu Feb 22, 2018 6:46 pm
by ka.li
Sure. I can take a look at one of the books.

Re: Review Publisher Files for Accessibility

Posted: Fri Feb 23, 2018 12:08 pm
by farrah
Thanks Richard and Ka. I've sent you both an email with the link to the files. Let me know if you have questions! Thanks for your input.

Re: Review Publisher Files for Accessibility

Posted: Fri Feb 23, 2018 4:08 pm
by Karoline
I'd take a look at God's Country if you still want someone to go through it.
Thanks.

Re: Review Publisher Files for Accessibility

Posted: Fri Feb 23, 2018 4:26 pm
by farrah
Thanks Karoline. I've just sent you an email with the dropbox link to the 3 files.

Re: Review Publisher Files for Accessibility

Posted: Tue Feb 27, 2018 2:12 pm
by rmarion
I just went to the dropbox, and there appears to only be two books there now. Gods country andDignity development democracy. If the third book still needs to be reviewed, would you be able to post it there again? Thanks.

Re: Review Publisher Files for Accessibility

Posted: Tue Feb 27, 2018 3:25 pm
by farrah
Hi Richard, thanks for noticing. Looks like someone accidentally removed it, I've put it back in. Just take a copy of it so others can still access the original. Cheers

Re: Review Publisher Files for Accessibility

Posted: Tue Mar 20, 2018 10:29 am
by rmarion
Report on Publisher Submitted Files
Richard Marion

Over the last couple of weeks while I was working on my own project, I took a look at the 3 publisher submitted books we were asked to look at if we had any extra time. After reviewing the books for structure and accessibility, I have some comments on the files overall.

As I did not have time to read the entire contents of all 3 books, I may have missed some critical details for the 2 books I only scanned for items like graphics, and headings.

For the most part, I used an iPad with Ibooks as the primary method of looking at the files. So therefore, my comments are mainly based on the experience reading the files with iBooks. I did look at 2 of the books with Voice Dream and did notice that they did contain a heading structure when you opened the headings few option for the file.

For the most part the books only had text content. Therefore, I can’t provide any feedback on items like table navigation. The text of the books was readable with voiceover. Reading page by page or the entire book was possible. However, in the table of contents contained within the text of The Innocent And Other Stories did not work to move through by link within the text. It would only read the first couple of lines over and over again.

As none of the books had graphics throughout the text, the need for Alt Tags is minimal. None of the cover graphics were described and the text on the book covers was not read at all. In fact, the second title page had reading difficulties as well with all three books. Dignity Democracy Development apparently had a graphic or photo at the end of the book but I was unable to find it. There was a photo credit in the acknowledgements that indicated this.

When moving through the books page by page, sometimes it would indicate new chapters or headings. But this was inconsistent. For example in Dignity Democracy Development, sometimes it would read the new chapter title and other times it would read the chapter number only. A small formatting change in the text should resolve this. However, in the table of contents the links contain both the chapter numbers and the chapter headings. However, they are separated into different links after the prefs of the book.

As I do have some vision, I did notice that the 3 books seemed to use different default fonts. So I would recommend that the default font be more uniform for people who still can read the screen of their device. There are guidelines for fonts that are more easily read by people with partial sight.

As I mentioned at the beginning, I was only able to import the books into iBooks and Voice Dream. I did try digital Editions and ended up having technical difficulties with my copy of the program. With voice Dream, when opening up the headings option, it did more realistically reflect the heading structure of the book so I was able to get a better sense of the multiple levels of headings in the books.

If you have any questions for me, pleas let me know. Hopefully this will assist the publisher in further enhancing their accessibility of their books. If a person is just sitting down to read any of these book, this was defiantly possible with little effort already.