Introduction to Third-party Production of Born-Accessible Ebooks

When working with a conversion house or other third-party producer of ebooks, it’s important to talk about accessibility features. This introductory guide shares some questions you should ask to help determine a producer’s current accessibility practices. The producer’s answers should give you insight into their understanding of accessibility and their capacity to implement best practices.

Subject(s):

Ebook Production
Resource Type(s):

Foundations and Rationale
Audience:

Introduction

Suggested Prerequisite

Before reading this, you might want to review:

Introduction to the Production of Born-Accessible Ebooks

Understanding Third-Party Producer’s Accessibility Practices

In order to be sustainable, born-accessible publishing needs to involve the whole team: everyone — from the author to the distributor — has a crucial role to play. The ebook producer — whether a large conversion house, an independent contractors, or even a printer — is no exception. Some ebook producers are more knowledgeable about accessibility than others so discussing accessibility before they get started will help set the stage for the creation of highly accessible ebooks.

Here are some questions you can ask to help you determine a third-party producer’s current accessibility practices. Their answers should give you a better understanding of what the producer knows about accessibility and what they have the capacity to implement.

Checklist: Questions for Ebook Producers

General

What accessibility features do you include in your books?

Do you produce ebooks in version EPUB 3?

Do you produce reflowable ebooks?

Testing

Do you run accessibility checks on the files you produce? For example, do you do any manual checks for accessibility or use Ace by DAISY?

Images

Do you add alt-text to images?

Do you attach an ARIA role of presentation to decorative images?

Do you wrap figures in “figure” tags rather than wrapping them in div containers? Using “figure” and “figcaption” tags allows the image and caption to be linked, which improves accessibility.

Metadata

Do you add accessibility metadata to the OPF files of the EPUBs you produce?

Do you create a specific set of metadata for each book that you produce?

If we (the publisher) provided you with a set of metadata for the book, could you include it in the OPF file?

Titles

Do you amend the “title” tag of each document in the EPUB so that it carries the name of that section, not the filename or title of the book?

Headings

Do you denote the headings at the start of sections with the semantic tags of <h1>, <h2>, <h3>, etc.?

Do you use a single heading for each section so that the chapter number and title are encased in a single heading?

Navigation

Do you reference every section in the navigation files, including frontmatter such as the title page?

Style

Do you use semantic tags for style, such as <i> for italic and <b> for emphasis?

Do you differentiate between italic <i> and emphasis <em> as well as bold <b> and strong <strong>?

Do you add an internal Table of Contents to the book in a place that we specify (i.e., after the copyright page)?

Do you set the items in the Table of Contents up in a list, with active links to each section?

Semantic Structure

Do you use semantic tags to uniquely identify content such as sidebars, block quotes, and citations?

Tables

Do you build a header section for every table, with column titles encased in tags?

If a large table needs to be set as an image, do you link out to an accessible edition of the table?

Page List

Do you use a structured page list for our navigation files? Do you include ARIA roles and labels in each page break to indicate the page number for assistive technology?

Notes

Do you design footnotes and endnotes so that they can be read by simply clicking the number in the text?

Do you use a “Return to Text” link for each note so readers can find their place back into the main narrative?

Title Page

Do you retain the normal appearance of our title page without setting it as an image?

Download the Checklist

Click the button below to download a PDF file of the checklist.

Download

Next Steps

Preparing a Book for Conversion

Ebook Workflow Guide: In-house Production of Born-Accessible Ebooks

To prepare a book for conversion, with accessibility in mind, the steps covered in Ebook Workflow Guide: In-house Production of Born Accessible Ebooks should be followed (if you use Word and InDesign for your manuscript…

Subject(s): Ebook Production

Resource Type(s): Standards and Best Practices, Step-by-Step

Audience:

Technical

Reviewing the Produced Ebook

EPUB from InDesign Cleanup (video)

Take a raw InDesign-exported EPUB and cleaning it up with accessibility in mind. Adding semantics, page breaks, HTML 5, clean CSS, and accessibility metadata.

Subject(s): Ebook Production

Resource Type(s): Step-by-Step

Audience:

Technical

Final Quality Assurance (QA) Pass

Quality Assurance of Completed Ebooks

Once your ebook has been created, it is time to do a quality assurance check for accessibility. This resource contains both simplified and advanced checklists to help you review your ebooks.

Subject(s): Ebook Production

Resource Type(s): Checklist

Audience:

Introduction

External Links to More Information

Communicating with Conversion Houses & Ebook Producers

This page contains a checklist of items to help ensure a book is marked up following accessibility guidelines and best practices. It also includes a listing of questions listed by topic to help publishers assess a conversion house’s knowledge of accessibility and what they can implement.

Accessible Publishing Tips: Working with a digital production vendor

Tips from Benetech on working with a third-party vendor, certified or otherwise.

Content source acknowledgement:

AccessiblePublishing.ca: Communicating with Conversion Houses