ENTRIES TAGGED "accessibility"

Accessible user interfaces

Open platforms and communities lead to a more inclusive world

For readers in a digital age, interaction with content is ubiquitous. We no longer interact with content through paper, e-readers, or tailored apps alone, but via millions of digital products and web properties designed to streamline our consumption. In recent years there has been much effort allocated to ensuring that content can be accessed by the broadest possible audience, including readers with disabilities. At TOC 2013 a panel presented Born Accessible: An up-to-the minute update on the tools, standards, techniques and developments that support ‘Inclusive Publishing’ practices, focusing on tools and techniques for ensuring that digital content is accessible to as many readers as possible. It’s important to ensure that digital content is accessible and well as ensuring the accessibility of the platforms and systems that deliver this content.

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O’Reilly’s journey to EPUB 3

Upgrading to EPUB 3 is not a trivial undertaking

We at O’Reilly are very pleased to announce that we have officially upgraded to EPUB 3, and ebook bundles purchased from oreilly.com will now include EPUB 3 files, in addition to Mobi and PDF files. All O’Reilly ebooks released in 2013 are now available in EPUB 3 format, and in the coming weeks, we will be updating and rereleasing our backlist ebooks in EPUB 3 as well.

But while we’re excited to share this news, this article is not merely a press release. The decision of when and how to upgrade to EPUB 3 has been challenging for many in the publishing community, and it has been a long journey for O’Reilly as well. I’d like to talk more about why we chose to take this step now, what additional value we believe EPUB 3 provides to our customers, and the challenges and tradeoffs we’ve tackled in making our EPUBs backward compatible with EPUB 2 platforms.

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Checking in on DAISY downloads

Accessibility is a feature every publisher needs to own and implement

Since adding the accessible DAISY format to our ebook bundles in late 2010, we’ve seen a slow but steady uptick in customers downloading and using these files. In looking at downloads month to month in 2012, we find that downloads are routinely into the high hundreds and often over the thousand mark (for more data on which formats O’Reilly customers are downloading, check out Joe’s post from earlier this year).

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Why we needed EPUB 3

Why we needed EPUB 3

New reading devices, multimedia storytelling and accessibility needs made EPUB3 a necessity.

EPUB3 is more than just bug fixes and tweaks from the last version. It represents a major change in what an ebook can be. (This is an excerpt from the Tools of Change for Publishing report, "What is EPUB3

Accessibility and HTML5 highlight TOC day 1

Accessibility and HTML5 highlight TOC day 1

Workshops on publishing standards and HTML5 caught the attention of TOC attendees.

TOC recap: Publishers were very interested in the HTML5 workshop, and the publishing standards took a broad stroke look at the changing scene, including accessibility issues.

Accessible publishing is good business

Accessible publishing is good business

Dave Gunn on how ebook tech helps readers with disabilities and opens a new publishing market.

Dave Gunn, technical manager at the Royal National Institute of Blind People and a speaker at TOC 2011, discusses the bright future of accessible publishing and how it offers moral and financial benefits.

O'Reilly ebook bundles now include DAISY talking book format

O'Reilly ebook bundles now include DAISY talking book format

More than 800 O'Reilly titles are now available in DAISY format. If you've already bought an oreilly.com ebook, you can find the DAISY files on your account page.

Think Digital and Get Accessible for Free

Today brought news of the release of a "Save to Daisy" add-in for Microsoft Word, and while a new Word add-in wouldn’t normally be news for publishers, there’s a bit more to this story. Among the benefits of distributing content digitally is that it ostensibly makes the content more accessible to alternate reading devices. It’s not difficult to see…