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EPUB Crawl: Demystifying Automated eBook Accessibility Testing

Handouts

Presented at 8:00am in Plaza Ballroom D on Wednesday, November 17, 2021.

#34387

Speaker(s)

  • Christine Foushi, OneStep Beyond

Session Details

  • Length of Session: 1-hr
  • Format: Lecture
  • Expertise Level: Beginner
  • Type of session: General Conference

Summary

Accessible eBooks are an important consideration for publishers and educators alike. Unfortunately, the topic can be difficult to approach. There are technical barriers to diagnosing and remediating eBook accessibility concerns.

Logictran aims to broaden this conversation with its new eBook accessibility tool. This novel piece of software will perform industry-standard accessibility validations on user-submitted eBooks and provide users with clear direction and solutions.

Abstract

Accessibility is becoming an extremely important consideration for digital publishers both inside and outside of higher education.  Teachers and other curators also have a vested interest in making sure that the materials they require or suggest are accessible to all of their students.  At the present moment, however, the process of testing an ePub for accessibility requires a fair amount of technical knowledge. 

A variety of open source tools can greatly cut back on the level of manual effort required. However, a lot of the required accessibility tests are spread across multiple tools, so users looking to validate their ePubs will need to run them through multiple processes. Moreover, interpreting the results and identifying solutions from these tools often requires someone with a highly-specialized knowledge of eBook accessibility and WCAG specifications. These challenges make the process of testing an ePub—and starting a conversation about accessibility—into a daunting task for people who aren’t already knowledgeable on the subject.

Logictran aims to alleviate these pain points and empower people from all areas of higher education and publishing to test their ePubs for accessibility—and understand what the results mean.  We have built an easy-to-use browser-based tool that takes in ePubs and uses both industry standard open source tests and Logictran’s propriety tests to analyze accessibility and provide suggestions and solutions in clear language.  Our goal is to use this tool to make accessibility an easier topic to approach for educators and publishers of all sizes.  

Keypoints

  1. Accessible materials need to be verified or otherwise tested for accessibility.
  2. Existing ePub Accessibility tests are geared toward technical people and don't always provide solutions.
  3. Addressing above issues will make ePub accessibility an easier topic to approach and discuss for more people.

Disability Areas

All Areas

Topic Areas

Accessible Educational Materials, Assistive Technology, EPUB Track, Uncategorized

Speaker Bio(s)

Christine Foushi

Christine Foushi returns to AHG for the third year. A self-proclaimed publishing nerd, Christine is a journalist by trade, has worked within the higher education technology and publishing industry for the last 20 years, and is an advocate in accessibility. Ensuring accessibility and inclusion for all is her passion not only in her career, but within her community and personal life. She's the Principal Consultant of OneStep Beyond, an organization intended to empower individuals and organizations to navigate the digital landscape through innovative technology solutions while maintaining a commitment to accessibility. She was also recently awarded as a recipient of the 2024 GAAD Speakers' Fund sponsored by the GAAD Foundation. For more information, visit https://gaad.foundation/what-we-do/speakers-fund#speakersFundApplication.

Handout(s)