The document outlines the advantages of the EPUB format over PDF, emphasizing its relevance in the education sector and its accessibility features supported by open web standards like HTML5 and WAI-ARIA. It discusses IBM's transition to using EPUB for mobile documentation and the support of EPUB by major mobile platforms, along with the development of Readium for enhancing EPUB adoption. The document also highlights the various tools, applications, and collaborative efforts aimed at advancing EPUB accessibility and usage in publishing.

1. © 2015 IBM Corporation
EPUB3 Empowers Learning Professionals on the Go
 Becky Gibson – Senior Technical Staff
Member Accessibility on Readium and
Acquisitions, IBM Software
 George Kerscher - Secretary General,
DAISY Consortium, Senior Officer,
Accessible Technology, Learning Ally,
President IDPF
 Rich Schwerdtfeger – CTO Accessibility
IBM Software
EPUB Empowers
Learning Professionals
on the Go

2. 2 © 2015 IBM Corporation
What is EPUB?
• EPUB is an Open Electronic Publishing Standard from the
International Digital Publishing Forum
• EPUB is based on Open Web Standards
• EPUB is fast becoming the de-facto book publishing standard for
Education
• EPUB is supported by the major mobile devices – Android and
iOS

3. 3 © 2015 IBM Corporation
Open Web Standards used in EPUB
• HTML5
• WAI-ARIA
• SVG
• MathML
• CSS
• SMIL

4. 4 © 2015 IBM Corporation
EPUB Adoption Today
• Second only to plain text and PDF in platform reader support
– Kindle: Main exception but converters exist
• Document converters exist to convert Word to EPUB
• Authoring Tools Are Available
• Asia-Pacific: EPUB is THE standard as Amazon is not present
• Korea: All education materials are EPUB
• All the publishing support systems and conversion houses
support EPUB

5. 5 © 2015 IBM Corporation
EPUB vs. PDF - Mainstream
• EPUB is NOT designed for high print fidelity
• Reflow and scroll vs. pinch and squeeze on mobile
• More searchable (based on HTML5)
• Ability to create portable cloud annotation
– Highlighting, bookmarks, notes, etc.
• Ability to increase fonts dynamically
• Easier to translate – (Based on HTML5)
• Tie speech to text (self voice)
• Future: Deliver a context aware experience
• Deliver Interactive Documentation (Already going on in Education)
• Able to phase in features as enterprise is ready
• And More: It is programmatically accessible

6. 6 © 2015 IBM Corporation
PDF Accessibility
• Technical
– Tagged PDF Very Hard to make Accessible.
– Accessibility infrastructure outdated
– Accessibility support limited beyond Windows
– No access to Math and rich graphics
• Customers
– Costly to remediate accessibility issues
– Disabled users would like to see it 'go away'
• IBM had no control to fix

7. 7 © 2015 IBM Corporation
EPUB
Accessibility
HTML5 + ARIA 1.0
EPUB Accessibility and the Open Web
Today Tomorrow
User Context Accessibility Info.
•CSS Media Queries
•IndieUI User Context
New Accessibility Semantics
•WAI-ARIA 1.1
•WAI-ARIA Digital Book Module
•WAI-ARIA Graphics Module
SVG2 Accessibility
•WAI-ARIA
•WAI-ARIA Graphics Module
•Keyboard support
•Connectors
Miscellaneous
•Web Speech API
•QTI test widgets
•MathML reader cloud extensions
for Readium (Benetech)

8. 8 © 2015 IBM Corporation
Why IBM Moved to EPUB for Documentation
• MobileFirst – IBM Software Directive to prioritize mobile over
desktop
• Focus beyond Windows desktop platform
• PDF not a usable format for handhelds
• Print Fidelity less important on a mobile device
• Opportunity to leverage accessibility work on open web platform
for IBM Documentation
• Ability to re-use open web accessibility efforts and leverage
access to digital Math
• The ability to provide interactive documentation to customers

9. 9 © 2015 IBM Corporation
IBM Internal Transformation
• All Documentation is stored in OASIS Darwin Information Typing
Architecture (DITA)
– Many enterprises use DITA in part of their business
– Use Oxygen XML Editors to author content
– Oxygen DITA to EPUB converters
• Expanding internal web accessibility test tool to process EPUB
• Began producing EPUB documents 3Q14
• EPUB Readers
– Tactile: Lucifox plugin Firefox
– Long term: Readium.js, Readium SDK (Cloud/Mobile)

10. 10 © 2015 IBM Corporation
Readium.org
• Open Source Technology for EPUB 3 and the Open Web
Platform
• Develops technology to accelerate the adoption of EPUB 3 by
the global digital publishing industry
• Non-profit membership organization
• Formed in February, 2013

11. 11 © 2015 IBM Corporation
Readium Members (partial list)
• IBM
• DAISY Consortium
• Benetech
• Evident Point
• Learning Ally
• New York Public Library
• Bluefire Productions
• Datalogics
• Digital Public Library of
America
• KOBO
• Publiwide
• Many more …

12. 12 © 2015 IBM Corporation
Readium Products
• Readium Web
– EPUB 3 rendering engine for browser-based cloud readers
• Readium SDK – 1.0 released 12/2014
– EPUB 3 rendering engine for native apps
• Reference Applications
– OSX, iOS, Android, Windows (in progress)
• All hosted on github.com/Readium

13. 13 © 2015 IBM Corporation
Readium Applications
• Web Applications
– Chrome Extension – Release 2.15.2, 09/2014
– Cloud Reader
• Mobile Applications
– iOS, Android, Windows (in progress)
• Desktop Applications
– OS X, Windows (in progress)

14. 14 © 2015 IBM Corporation
Readium Features
• Support for EPUB 2.0 and 3.0 Rendering
• Media Overlays
• MathML (via MathJax)
• EPUB Reading System Object
• Obfuscated font support
• Accessibility
• Versioning via github hashes
For more details see Readium SDK 1.0 Release Notes

15. 15 © 2015 IBM Corporation
Readium Future Plans
• EPUB 3.01
• EDUPUB
• Digital Rights Mgmt. (DRM) via Lightweight Content
Protection (LCP)
• Cross-browser support
• Additional Features
– bookmarks, annotations, search
– pop-up footnotes
– multiple renditions
– More …

16. 16 © 2015 IBM Corporation
Readium Demo
See http://weba11y.com/Examples/Readium/ReadiumFFDemo.html

17. 17 © 2015 IBM Corporation
EPUB Authoring Tools
• EPUB 3 brings the full power of HTML 5 to portable documents
• Goal is to deliver the most readable, engaging and accessible
experience to readers
• Publishers have developed internal production processes that
make the best use of their assets
• Conversion vendors specialize in EPUB 3 for the
publishing industry
• “Save as EPUB 3” feature: demand will drive

18. 18 © 2015 IBM Corporation
Tracking Authoring Revolution
• Pages first to support EPUB creation
• iBooks Author: Caution - Apple’s ecosystem
• People with fair knowledge of XHTML 5 can create separate
XHTML files and then build .epub files with EPUBCheck
• DAISY Community uses Tobi to create EPUB 3
• DAISY Pipeline 2 converts DAISY files to EPUB 3
• List of authoring tools: http://epubzone.org/solutions
• Accessibility needs improvement

19. 19 © 2015 IBM Corporation
EPUB 3 / EDUPUB
• EDUPUB: EPUB 3 semantically enhanced for education
• Integration with LMS
• Going far beyond the print textbook
– QTI Test widgets
– Common Widget Library (Scripted components)
– Caliper analytic integration

20. 20 © 2015 IBM Corporation
Thank You

21. 21 © 2015 IBM Corporation
Backup

22. 22 © 2015 IBM Corporation
Sample ePUB Readers
• Apps
– Apple iBooks
– Google Play Books
– Aldiko
– Calibre
– FB Reader
– Various reader apps,
such as Kobo, Nook, ...
• Web and cloud
– Magic Software
– Readium
– EPUBReader
– ...

23. 23 © 2015 IBM Corporation
Readium Licensing
• Gnu Affero General Public License Version 3
– copyleft
• Alternative license based upon Apache 2.0
– targeted to commercial adopters
– requires minimum contribution

24. 24 © 2015 IBM Corporation
Sample ePUB Exporters/Converters
• Document converters exist
– Word to ePub
– PDF to ePub
• Apache ePub exporters
– EPUB generator – basic ePUB transform for OO XML Documents
– WritetoPUB – converts any OO supported document to ePUB
– ODFtoPUB – an ODF to ePub exporter