Large publishers face a complicated path to make their content accessible.

1. Challenges, Choices, Change
Accessibility for Large Publishers

2. CSUN: Challenges, Choices, Change |
 is the premier global Health, Science, and Technology
publisher.
 is headquartered in Amsterdam.
 publishes thousands of books each year.
 publishes over 2,000 journals.
 created the web-based products ScienceDirect and
Scopus.
 employs over 7,000 people in 24 countries.
2
Elsevier…

3. CSUN: Challenges, Choices, Change |
Introduction
• Tripp Narup, Global digital archive manager
• 4,200+ alternate file requests per year
• 18-year veteran
• What was I thinking?! [I was wearing a bright red bowtie.)
Violates WCAG 1.4.1: Color is not
used as the only visual means of
conveying information

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Book Technology
• 1450: Gutenberg
• 1817: Am. Sign Language
• 1824: Braille
• 1858: Am. Printing House for the
Blind

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Technology (cont’d)
• 1976: Ray Kurzweil’s “Reading Machine”
• 1977: Editwriter
• 1984: Macintosh
• 1989: JAWS screen reader
• First omni-character
optical character
recognition device
• Much faster than
Braille
• OCR still in wide use
today

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Current Technology
• 1998: Revised Section 508
• 1999: WCAG 1.0
• 1999: California AB 422
• 2004: NIMAS
• 2007: first Kindle
• 2007: first iPhone
• 2007: NVDA
• 2008: WCAG 2.0
• 2009: AccessText Network
• 2014: Netflix provides captions for all films

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Publishers
Why Isn’t Everything Accessible?

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Publishers are…
• Big! Ouch!

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Publishers….
• Are NOT dinosaurs!
The 10 e's of publishing
Electronic
Excessive
Easy
Expansive
Enigmatic
Experimental
Experiential
Ephemeral
Empathy
Eternal
Source: Youngsuk (YS) Chi
http://www.elsevier.com/connect/the-10-es-of-publishings-future

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Publishers are…
• Complicated!

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Alt Text
What Does It Take?

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Alt Text involves…
• Author contracts
• Authoring systems
• Development
• Book Production
• Vendors
• EW
• DTD
• Specs, guidelines
• Platforms
• Sales
Legal
ITUCD
Editorial
Operations
Art & Design
Global
SupplierMgmt
Content
Standards
Electronic
Production
ePUB
Product
Owners

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Accessibility 2014
The Plan and Current Practices

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Requirements by Channel
• Web
• Alt text
• Closed captions
• Keyboard navigation
• Table structures
• Works with screen readers
• ePUB/eBook
• Alt text
• Table structures
• PDF
• Alt text
• Bookmarks
• Correct tab and reading order
• Table markup
• Multimedia
• Closed captions
• Transcripts
• Controls from keyboard

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Elsevier Accessibility Plans
• Operations
• Requirements based on WCAG 2.0
• Operations Project Plan announced 07-March-2014
• DTD changes
• Systems changes
• Specification changes
• UCD
• Platform evaluations
• Identify accessibility shortfalls
• Platform remediation
• Specific changes required
• Operations
• Adjust plan, systems, & specs as needed

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Timeline
• 1st Quarter
• Finalize Requirements, Project Plan, Implementation Plan
• 2nd Quarter
• Prep for DTD and spec changes
• Platform assessment
• 3rd Quarter
• Roll out DTD & spec changes
• End-to-end testing
• Platform improvements
• 4th Quarter
• Roll out new accessibility features with each new platform release

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Current Accessibility at Elsevier
• Reed-Elsevier Accessibility Policy went live January 2014
• ePUB 3 as of March 2014
• Two-hour turnaround on alternate file requests
• Founding member of AccessText
• LearningAlly collaboration
• Tagged PDFs
• Ted’s Collaboration Group
• SD Articles in HTML are screen reader friendly
• Pages are well-structured
• Math is in MathML
• Skip navigation link on pages
• Pages are keyboard operable
• Pages have titles
• Links are clearly named

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Wrap up
• Challenge
• Meet WCAG 2.0 requirements
• Alt text
• Closed captions
• More structural accessibility in release cycles
• Choices
• Bake accessibility into all specs, procedures and systems
• Supported by DTD, stored in XML
• Change
• New platform features
• Increased accessibility
• Your content, your way
• Greater organizational awareness of accessibility issues

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The coolest thing in St. Louis…
“…an attitude which regards both the
normal and the handicapped as parts
of a great social whole, dependent
upon each other in all that
protects, strengthens and liberates.”
Helen Keller
October 20, 1942

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Questions?