Presentation by Neil Jarvis, Blind Foundation at the World Blind Union Asia Pacific (WBUAP) Mid-Term Regional General Assembly.

2. Inclusive Publishing –
Reading for Everyone
Neil Jarvis
njarvis@blindfoundation.org.nz
24 November 2014

3. DAISY Consortium
Vision
People have equal access to information and knowledge,
regardless of disabilities
We envision a future where 'born accessible' publications are digitally
created with accessibility features built in rather than built on. The
second, a more costly approach requires conversion from an
inaccessible format into a format that can be used by all people,
including those who have a print disability.

4. DAISY Consortium
Mission
We work to create the best way to read and publish, for
everybody, in the 21st century.
We advocate that the accessibility features be implemented in all
mainstream publications and supported by mainstream reading
applications and devices.
The era of 'born accessible' publications means that the future of
publishing and reading will be inclusive for everyone, providing equal
access to books and information for people with print disabilities.

5. DAISY Consortium
Key Activities
To achieve our mission, vision and goals we need to:
•Help creators, distributors and service providers of access-enhanced
publications be more effective
•Help DAISY Consortium member organizations to work together to
deliver inclusion
•Help authors and mainstream publishers build inclusion into their
publishing processes
•Help publishing, reading technology and content authoring tool
industries to enable a great reading experience for people reading with
their eyes, ears or fingers
•Influence legal, copyright and standards bodies to make an efficient
global marketplace that includes developing countries
•Help people with disabilities benefit from the improvements.

6. DAISY Consortium
Full Members
Associate Members
Friends & Developers
Publishers, Educators
and Advocates
Individual Supporters
DAISY Focal Points

7. Accessible EPUB3
If an accessible EPUB3 book is produced, these are
just some of the features it might have:
•Easy navigation around the publication: having access to the content is great,
but it is much better if one can navigate it efficiently and get to the part of the
book needed;
•Integrated human narration or text-to-speech
•Verbalised descriptions of pictoral and other graphical information;
•Implemented Standardised accessibility guidelines: ensuring that the EPUB3
book is indeed accessible after all;
•If Digital Rights Management techniques are used, they don’t interfere with the
assistive technology used to access the publication. If they do, this would also
render an otherwise accessible publication inaccessible once more;
•It will enable the book to be read by a variety of devices and technologies used
by print disabled people. An accessible publication which is tied to an
inaccessible book reader again renders that publication inaccessible,
regardless of how accessible the EPUB3 is itself.

8. How do we get to where we
want to be?
• We need to deliver more mainstream accessible publications: this goes
back to my earlier point about the need for blindness agencies to get out of
the way of publishers and focus on what would still be hard to produce in
the future;
• We must improve the efficiency of the customized accessibility publishers
like the blindness agencies and allow us to focus on doing those things
which are going to remain harder to do, particularly the demand for STEM.
There is no reason though why our efforts cannot be fully integrated into the
workflows of the mainstream publishers: that way, we can get them to help
us to help them by placing the necessary structures and mark-up into their
publications as part of their BAU workflow. That means the whole publishing
process, from the author right through to the distribution of the final product
should be thinking about accessibility;
• We need to modernize the whole copyright, legal and business framework
under which we operate so that we no longer waste precious resources by
duplicating each other’s work. We need to stop the Harry Potter Effect. This
is where Marrakesh comes in;

9. How do we get to where we
want to be?
• We need to improve the current technologies which are used for publishing
and for reading so that accessibility is built in. So our efforts need to focus
not just on the published books but also on the devices which will play them:
the complete distribution channel must be made more accessible than it
currently is. Too many e-readers are currently unusable by print disabled
people. And what we do know is that people are consuming their content in
many different ways: from the almost traditional DAISY talking book players
through to smartphones and tablets. Even the authoring process needs to
be involved here: publishing software needs to expressly remind content
authors and publishers to include accessibility structures in their files, and to
nag them if they fail to do that;
• We must ensure that print disabled people are coming on the journey with
us. They need to be equipped with the technology, and the confidence to
use that technology. Otherwise all our efforts will still only be of benefit to a
tiny sub-section of the community who can both afford and use the
technology they will need to access the content.
• Blindness agencies are going to have to play their part in that process, but
the publishing industry is going to have to make it worth our while.

11. In Closing
Inclusive publishing benefits everyone: not just print disabled
people. By being inclusive and accessible:
•Publishers will grow their customer base. They will have a competitive
edge when it comes to tendering for government contracts: more and
more countries are enacting legislation which requires inclusivity and
this is only likely to increase;
•It reduces costs to the consumer and to the publisher;
•It allows specialist agencies to focus on producing more complex
content which is harder to produce in mainstream workflows
•In EPUB3, we have a tool to make this dream into a reality.
Inclusive publishing is not only possible, it is the way forward.
There has never been a better opportunity to make it happen.
We need to work in partnership to achieve it, and we need to
start now.

12. Useful Websites
• DAISY Consortium
• www.daisy.org
• Accessible Books Consortium
• www.AccessibleBooksConsortium.org
• Accessible Publishing Best Practice Guidelines for Publishers
by Editeur:
• http://www.visionip.org/inclusive_publishing/en/accessible_best_practice
_guidelines_for_publishers.html
• Readium organisation which is working to accelerate the
adoption of EPUB3:
• http://readium.org
• The Diagram Center’s Top Tips for creating EPUB3 files:
• http://diagramcenter.org/54-9-tips-for-creating-accessible-epub-3-
files.html

13. Web blindfoundation.org.nz
Phone 0800 24 33 33