Accessibility

[DiapDealer]

The other point to keep in mind is that accessibility support in mainstream reading apps has almost nothing to do with whether or not EPUB creators should strive to make their EPUBs as accessible as possible. The fact that outside entities in the distribution chain might thwart your efforts to do so is neither here nor there. That's on them.

Accessible EPUBs are a worthy cause whether or not your favorite reading app or rendering engine fully supports all accessibility features. They're not made any worthier by wider support.

As to the original question (which is entirely moot, by the way): there doesn't need to be enough programs on enough platforms to "handle it." An accessibility feature being ignored by a reading app is not straining anything.

[graycyn]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Accessible EPUBs are a worthy cause whether or not your favorite reading app or rendering engine fully supports all accessibility features. They're not made any worthier by wider support.

Yeah, that!

A day could come when any of us might appreciate that accessibility!

I *hope* I won't come to need it, but if I should, I'll be ever so grateful for the efforts that ebook makers put into it.

[JSWolf]

But if you have a need for some of the accessibility in ePub 3, how do you get it? What programs on what platforms?

I'm not saying that there is any problem including the accessibility code. I'm wondering what sort of support for it there is.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I'm not saying that there is any problem including the accessibility code. I'm wondering what sort of support for it there is.

Quite simply put: no you're not. You're looking, like always, for justification in not worrying about accessibility spec requirements.

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

What programs are there that handle the ePub 3.x accessibility?

There's not just EPUB3, there's the broader HTML5 ecosystem as well.

The HTML out of the book can be extracted, then read in alternate apps... like Screen Readers (NVDA, JAWS, etc.).

For more apps, also see DAISY's recent video:

DAISY Consortium: "Examining the Accessible Mobile Reading Revolution"

They explain some of the Android/iOS stuff, and how this younger generation is even more mobile-only... and how you can use the built-in tools to speak images (alt text), navigate lists, read tables, etc.

As was discussed previously, IF you mark up your documents properly, the tools are (and will be) out there.

... Like the famous "<i>, <em> or <span> for italics?" thread. Screen Readers already make different sounds based on <i> or <em>, or Text-to-Speech can read them differently.

Originally Posted by jhowell

KFX focuses on visible rendering and strips out semantic features of the source file. Some examples are the distinction between text and headings and between <em> and <i>. ARIA markup is completely discarded.

This is a huge shame.

Did that happen with KF8 as well? I liked how I was able to extract KF8->EPUB, and still get HTML relatively close to the original document.

But to hear KFX completely strips that stuff out... shame.

Originally Posted by Quoth

Is it that important with the massive rise in number of Audiobook titles?

Audiobooks have their own Accessibility problems.

See this discussion panel from a few months ago:

BookNet_Canada: "Audiobook accessibility"

Here was just a few issues mentioned in the talk:

• Problems navigating
  
  • Most are just based on filenames.
    
  • Or MP3s bundled in a ZIP file with no rhyme or reason. No consistency between books.
• No good metadata
• Missing asides/footnotes
  
  • In many cases, of Non-Fiction books/journals, the footnotes are just as important.
    
  • If they are in the audiobook, no easy way to jump back/forth between notes or jump over notes entirely.

You also have most of the audiobook companies who are purely audiobook producers, and have nothing to do with the print-publishers/EPUB3.

To try to force that entire print-workflow (EPUB3) on an audio-workflow doesn't make much sense.

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Quite simply put: no you're not. You're looking, like always, for justification in not worrying about accessibility spec requirements.

And bits and pieces of Accessible stuff can work in certain apps OR be added in the future.

For example, with proper lang markup:

Multi-Language Spellchecking did not exist a few years ago, now it exists in both Sigil/Calibre.

Hyphenation is getting better all the time, and hyphenation dictionaries are being created/added into browsers, trickling their way down into word processors, etc. (Just a few months ago, I discussed "Welsh" Hyphenation.)

Text-to-Speech can use lang markup to speak correctly. ("tacos" in English is not spoken the same as "tacos" in Spanish.)

Dictionaries. On phones, you can press/hold on a word, then look it up. If the lang is marked up properly, you may have a German->English dictionary appear.

Automatic Translation. Things like DeepL, Google Translate, can translate from language X -> your preferred language based on this data. The PocketBook app on Android can even do automatic text translation for you (if you wanted an EPUB-specific example!).

- - -

Okay, so, the app you're using TODAY doesn't support Multi-Language Spellchecking... but it might next year once they see how powerful/glorious it is!

The device you're using TODAY still forces English hyphenation on everything, no matter the book's language. Well, maybe there'll be an update where Hyphenation begins working based on lang!

If you build in Accessibility, they will come.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by Tex2002ans

Did that happen with KF8 as well? I liked how I was able to extract KF8->EPUB, and still get HTML relatively close to the original document.

But to hear KFX completely strips that stuff out... shame.

As far as I know KF8 retains that markup, but I don't know for sure.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by jhowell

As far as I know KF8 retains that markup, but I don't know for sure.

My current experience is that when I KindleUnpack a KF8 to epub, the markup is retained. I've only seen one KF8 that included accessibility information but it seemed to survive. That was pretty basic information so I'm not sure if I would have noticed bits and bobs that did not survive.