Editorial, Manuscript Prep, and Word

I bet you are used to these kinds of conversations starting in the production department. I want to back up conversations about accessibility to say that this work categorically starts in the editorial department. The more folks are involved and invested in accessible outcomes throughout the publishing workflow, the more likely we are to end up with well-rounded content.

There is quite a bit that editorial staff can do to contribute to accessible outcomes. An understanding of and focus on structure and navigation is a clear one that both of these resources emphasize. This APLN article, Incorporating Accessibility into the Editorial Process is a good starting point. And Taylor and Francis, whose reputation for accessibility is borne out with an Accessible Books Consortium award for excellence in accessible publishing, has some very good guidelines for creating a clean, well-structured manuscript in their guide, How to Make Your Research Accessible. Many authors, for example, use word processing software to design and typeset their content and this is always a mistake and best left to the professionals.

Microsoft Word is the software of choice for so many of us in book publishing. And 90% of us aren’t exploiting it adequately for its built-in accessibility features. The DAISY Consortium has a video webinar, Word Document Accessibility 101, that goes through in detail how to best to use Word to support that work. This is a really useful video for people new to using Word. And for veterans as well.

And take note: Word has a very good built-in accessibility checker. Use it! It is really helpful. Bear in mind that automated checkers are just one tool and most definitely not foolproof but it is 100% better than not checking at all.

Finally, the already lauded DAISY Consortium has a very useful tool to convert to accessible EPUB directly from Word, WordToEPUB. Try it! It’s awesome and, honestly, not talked about nearly enough. They also have a webinar explaining how to use it: WordToEPUB Extended Tutorial. Some caveats: it only works on PC/Windows computers. And it works well but that assumes a well-made Word file. It can’t turn garbage into gold but it can create a tidy EPUB from a well-structured file at the touch of a button.

Typesetting & Design

A quick couple of resources: the Registered Graphic Designers organization in Toronto has a useful publication about print accessibility. (Sidebar: the market is ripe for an update to this document.) And there is an annual virtual focussed on design and accessibility, the Design + Accessibility Summit. There is a lot at this event about accessibility basics, PDF, image descriptions, and more. Virtual means that you can stop and rewind and really get all the details that you need. Check it out — it might be right for you or your staff.

The elephant in almost any room I’m in is InDesign. InDesign is such a dominant product in layout work that a small expert group, assembled by the Accessible Books Consortium, has engaged the InDesign engineers over the past 4.5 years to improve how EPUBs are exported from that software. And substantial improvements have been made. There is still work to be done but it is massively improved over a few years ago. Hooray! The links here are to a news update on the changes, a webinar detailing the most recent ones, and a training series on the APLN website. It is a slightly out-of-date series of micro-lessons on how to work the InDesign gears to make good, accessible ebooks.

Image Descriptions

There are an abundance of resources around developing alt text but, again, knowing which sites to trust is can feel like a crapshoot.

The first resource I want to point you to is the Poet Training Tool. Developed by The DIAGRAM Center (Digital Image And Graphic Resources for Accessible Materials), a Benetech Global Literacy initiative. The Poet Training Tool is a web-based image description resource that helps people learn when and how to describe various types of images frequently found in all kinds of books. Users of this tool have access to best practice guidelines and hands-on exercises that help cultivate skills for writing effective image descriptions for critical visual content.

The current version of this web-based resource is broken up into three key sections. The first section guides users through the process of determining when a description is needed. The second section provides general and specific guidelines on how to produce an effective description, along with examples produced by accessibility experts. The last section allows users to upload content and practice writing descriptions using their own images.

The third link on screen is to WebAIM’s guidelines on alt text. This is an excellent plain-language introduction to the nuts and bolts of image descriptions with useful examples, and good breakdowns of the various choices one might make when writing an image description. It also includes some basics on how to code image descriptions.

When it comes to resources in other languages, I have two links to resources available in both French and English, which may be useful for some of you. The first is a guide to writing image descriptions — and this is a good plain language resource. The second is the Literary Image Descriptions best practice guide written by a researcher who creates content for print disabled people and which goes deep on how to describe image-heavy books. It’s a terrific guide that is long and very detailed and may be the exact thing you or your team needs.

The CooperHewitt museum guidelines are another wonderful resource for museum-quality imagery and how to level up your alt text game.

Finally, the specifications folks have been busy the last little while focusing on how best to code long or extended descriptions, a practice that is especially relevant to STEM and other kinds of complex content. After a great deal of testing and R&D, they recommend the approach that is essentially the simplest from a markup perspective: linking out to an HTML file with the extended description in it. More details and coded examples are available at that link.