Publishing and EPUB 101: The Fundamentals Everybody in Higher Education Should Know

Handouts

Presented at 8:00am in Colorado G-H on Wednesday, November 16, 2022.

#36208

Speaker(s)

  • George Kerscher, Chief Innovations Officer, DAISY Consortium

Session Details

  • Length of Session: 1-hr
  • Format: Lecture
  • Expertise Level: Not provided
  • Type of session: General Conference

Summary

EPUB3 is the publishing standard used in Higher Education by all the major publishers, and others are rapidly following their lead. Now that word processors support EPUB 3, it is becoming more widely used as the preferred document format for campus distribution. EPUB 3 is the most accessible format ever developed, and this presentation will cover the fundamentals of the format, Reading System, Authoring Tools, and of course the many accessibility features.

Abstract

Why should we care about a format? This session will make it clear that the EPUB 3 Standard is the most accessible publishing format ever developed. This session is intended for beginners, and experts will get the updates that will enable them to stay current in the publishing domain.

Topics to be covered: • What the EPUB 3 Standard is and where it comes from. • What the EPUB Accessibility Conformance and Discoverability Standard is. • How EPUB supports STEM and MathML. • What is accessibility metadata and how to know if a title is accessible. • Who are the publishers that produce Born Accessible EPUBs. • Who are the distributors of commercial and freely available EPUB titles. • What are the Reading Systems that are accessible. • What DSO’s should do to support students in their use of EPUB content. • How to produce perfectly accessible EPUB on your campus. • Guidance on best practices to buy Born Accessible materials. • Extensive list of resources for the deeper dive.

Keypoints

    Disability Areas

    Topic Areas

    Uncategorized

    Speaker Bio(s)

    George Kerscher

    George Kerscher Ph.D.

    “Access to information is a fundamental human right.” 2003 to the United Nations George Kerscher began his IT innovations in 1987 and coined the term "print disabled." George is dedicated to developing technologies that make information not only accessible, but also fully functional in the hands of persons who are blind or who have a print disability. He believes properly designed digitally published materials and web pages can make information accessible to all people. George is an advocate for semantically rich content which can be used effectively by everybody. As Chief Innovations Officer of the DAISY Consortium, Senior Advisor, Global Literacy to Benetech, and member of Publishing Groups in the W3C, Kerscher is a recognized international leader in document access. In addition, Kerscher chairs the DAISY/NISO Standards committee, Chairs the Steering Council of the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI, and also serves on the Advisory Board of the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).

    Handout(s)