eBooks: Standards, Laws & Implementations

George Kerscher, PhD

13th Annual Accessing Higher GroundAccessible Media, Web and Technology Conference

November 17, 2010

1: "In the Information Age, access to information is a fundamental

Human Right."

George Kerscher:

•DAISY Consortium, Secretary General

• International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF), President

•Web Accessibility Initiative, Chair Steering Council

2: Focus on What Students Need and Want

• Equal access to digital books

• Ability to use the features and functions everybody else uses

• Ideally, one reading system for their reading needs (perhaps not possible for everyone)

• Fine grain control of the reading experience

3: Essential Standards

• XHTML and HTML 5

•DAISY, officially the ANSI/NISO Z39.86-2005, Specifications for the Digital Talking Book

• EPUB 2.0.1

•DAISY 4 in development

• Authoring and Interchange

• EPUB 3 in development

4: The Market for Digital Publishing

• 2010 projections have Digital eBooks capturing 10% of the US market

• 55% of the paperback market goes to digital versions

• In 2013 we may reach the point where digital eBook sales outstrip print sales

• Slower uptake in Europe, but growing (about a year behind)

• Korea, Japan, China, and Taiwan exploding in growth and adoption

5: EPUB 3 Under the Hood

•Open Packaging Format (OPF), identifies the files used in the .epub file

•Open Publication Structure (OPS), contains the marked-up content

•Open Container Format (OCF), collects all files as a ZIP archive

OPS going to be called EPUB Content Documents

6: Significance of Adopting HTML 5

•We will take most of the HTML 5 elements for text

•MathML is included in HTML 5

•Canvas

• iframes

• JavaScript

• Video and Media (Which codec?)

7: Preserving Semantics in EPUB Content Documents

• Books, newspapers, journals have their own specific semantics

•We can provide a "semantic inflection" to HTML elements by using an attribute

• Example: footnotes and footnote references

• Semantic inflections through attributes provide an extensible rich mechanism based on RDF

8: Accessibility Threats3 types of EPUB 3

• XHTML 5 Serialization with images

• JavaScript in iframes

• JavaScript throughout eBooks as Apps, (wild and woolly EPUB)

Will iframes with JavaScript be accessible? Canvas + JavaScript = Animations (where is the accessibility?)

SVG of formatted pages, will it be natively accessible or will fallbacks be needed?

9: DAISY Endorsing & Adopting EPUB 3

•DAISY Navigation (NCX) is a MUST for both content and reading systems

• Semantics from DAISY Authoring and Interchange preserved

•DAISY organizations will create powerful, full-featured, accessible DAISY / EPUB

•Unbelievable opportunity for all of mainstream digital publishing to be accessible. We need: Guidelines and Best Practices, Conformance Suites & an army of knowledgeable legal and technical advocates.

10: Legal Issues in the Digital Publishing Space

:

• section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (the “Rehabilitation Act”)

• Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”).

ASU in Phoenix, Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Pace University in New York City, Reed College in Portland, and Princeton University in New Jersey have settled with DOJ.

• June 29, 2010 Joint DOJ & DOE "Dear Colleague" Letter: Electronic Book Readers http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/letters/colleague-20100629.html

11: What Makes for an Accessible Reading System

Every link in the chain must be accessible:

• The website for ordering and download

• The content from the publisher MUST conform to guidelines and best practices

• The User Agent (software or hardware) used to present the content MUST be accessible

• The "handshake" between the EPUB content and the User Agent is essential. Both MUST be accessible.

12: Upcoming Work in the DAISY Domain

The key to being successful is to integrate with the mainstream. DAISY work must not sit outside and advocate for guidelines and best practices - these MUST be woven into the fabric of publishing.

Upcoming Work in the DAISY Domain (continued)

• Validation tools that go beyond mere XML validation: EPUBcheck

• Conformance tests that User Agents can use to test their rendering

•Guidelines for publications

• Best practices that incorporate all aspects of accessibility

• Techniques for achieving what publishers want, while still being accessible

• Certification of EPUB content & User Agents, i.e. reading systems.

13: Mainstream EPUB Reading Systems

•Digital Rights Management (DRM) is being used not only to protect content, but to enable companies to carve out their segment of the business.

• Even if we had interoperable DRM, it is unlikely that the big players would want to change their business models.

• Each retail distributor needs to have an accessibility strategy.

Mainstream EPUB Reading Systems(continued)

•Big question: Must each reading system be accessible? If there are three restaurants on a block, is it legal for any of them to discriminate against any group of people?

•Dilemma: Will we get a fabulous reading experience from mainstream reading systems? Clearly, there will be different levels of accessibility, but we are looking for that rich reading experience; what does their "report card" show?

14: Kindle by Amazon

• Kindle 3 now has accessible menus

• The accessibility report card is not terrific

• Terrible TTS output implementation

•Other Kindle software is not accessible

• Publishers want Amazon to support more rich content; it cannot even display tables.

15: Digital Editions from Adobe

• Adobe is working with publishers and others to ensure that they support both the publisher's rights and the needs of Assistive Technology users, for all TTS setting configurations

• Regardless of the "Allow TTS" setting, screen readers and other assistive technology will be able to access the content

• Adobe Digital Editions (the reader) upcoming version will be accessible. Due to be released in Spring 2011

• Other reading systems that use the Adobe Mobile SDK are working on accessibility; no specific information yet.

16: iBooks from Apple

• iPad driving many planning decisions by publishers

• Provides a dynamic, powerful platform for development

• iPhone loved by blind users

• VoiceOver provides the accessibility

• iBooks work on notebooks and desktops

17: Blio by K-NFB Reading Technology

•Will not turn off TTS to Assistive Technology no matter what! The socially responsible decision

•Exposes the text through UI Automation; AT that supports UI Automation will work with Blio

•Supports EPUB

•Wants publishers to produce version specific for the Blio.

18: CourseSmart

• Based on widely available PDF from publishers.

• Presents JPG images of text on screen with extracted text with X/Y coordinates in the background. Developing mechanisms for extracted text from PDF to be stored with richer markup. Committed to markup titles adopted by universities or needed by students with disabilities.

• Students with disabilities will need to contact tech support to turn on the exposed text to screen readers and AT.

• $1.1 million grant from DOE along with Alternative Materials Access Center (AMAC) and AccessText Network.

• Will be moving to EPUB 3 when layout becomes rich enough to support textbooks, as publishers move to EPUB 3.

19: DAISY Reading Systems that Currently Support EPUB

• HumanWare Victor Reader Stream

• Dolphin EasyReader

• gh' s ReadHear PC and ReadHear for Mac

• BraillePlus

• Emerson, an open source basic reader.

20: Miscellaneous

•Google Editions uses EPUB

•Not sure about their launch date or their final approach

• Internet Archive supporting DAISY and EPUB; automatic processes.

21: What You Must Do to Ensure an Accessible Digital Publishing Future

You MUST be the loud voice on campus promoting fully accessible digital publishing!

• content MUST be fully accessible

• reading systems used on campus MUST be accessible

• If the university chooses to ignore the law, they are leaving themselves open to legal action.

What You Must Do to Ensure an Accessible Digital

Publishing Future (continued)

•Get informed and stay up-to-date on digital publishing with EPUB and DAISY

• Promote the use of publishers’ content that is fully accessible

• Promote reading systems that meet the students' needs and desires.

Thank you!