ePub Accessibility

5 Tips for improving the accessibility of your ePub documents

Why accessibility?
Making your documents more accessible will benefit all of your students, not just your students who have disabilities. Improving the accessibility of your ePub ebooks will often also improve the overall usability of the documents, resulting in an improved reading experience for all. For example, using headings and a table of contents in your documents will not only provide additional navigation for students with visual disabilities who rely on screen readers, it will also make it easier for other readers to easily get an overview of your content and more quickly find the information they are interested in reading. Aside from improved usability and a better user experience, accessibility is a legal requirement. Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities in any program that receives federal funding, including K-12 schools and institutions of higher learning. The rights of students with disabilities are also protected under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, which applies to all entities of state and local government, including public schools, colleges and universities. In response to the increasing use of e-readers and other emerging technologies in education, the U.S. Department of Education recently issued a Dear Colleague Letter (DCL) to college and university presidents. The purpose of the DCL was to clarify how the ADA and Section 504 apply to emerging technology such as ereaders. According to the DCL, the application of the nondiscrimination requirements of Section 504 and the ADA means that schools must ensure that emerging technology such as e-readers is fully accessible to students who are blind or have low vision. However, it is not just students with visual disabilities who are protected under these laws. In the DCL, the Department of Education added that students with specific learning disabilities that make it difficult for them to get information from printed sources (those students who have print disabilities) are also protected under U.S. disability laws. While the DCL was addressed to college and university presidents, it contained a section that clearly stated that elementary and secondary schools have the same legal obligations toward students with disabilities.

Accessibility Features of IOS

The IOS operating system that runs on the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch already provides a number of features to ensure students with disabilities can make use of the devices in order to have equal access to information. Out of the box, each of these devices include the following accessibility features: VoiceOver, a screen reader that allows students with visual disabilities who cannot see information on the screen to have the content read aloud to them. Zoom, which allows students with low vision to magnify the contents of the display. White on Black, for improved contrast that can make it easier for students with low vision to read content. This feature may also be helpful when other students use the devices to read in bright lighting. Speak Selection, reads highlighted text aloud for those with low vision or who need an audio version of the content. Large Text, for increasing the text size in built-in apps such as Notes, Contacts and Mail.

 Closed captions in the built-in video app to allow students with hearing disabilities to follow along with what is being said in a movie or podcast. Mono Audio, for ensuring that someone with hearing loss in one ear does not miss any of the audio content in a movie or podcast recorded in stereo. This feature mixes stereo content so that both channels of the stereo signal are combined and play in both ear pieces of a set of headphones.

Accessibility Features of iBooks

Many of the accessibility features of IOS can be used in conjunction with the iBooks app to ensure students have equal access to ebook content. For example, a student who uses the VoiceOver screen reader can perform a gesture (swiping down with two fingers) that will read the content in an ebook automatically until the student decides to stop the screen reader (which can be done by tapping once on the devices screen with two fingers). While the accessibility features of IOS and the iBooks app go a long way toward ensuring equal access to information for students with disabilities, there are some techniques that ebook authors can implement to ensure their content not only works well with the built-in accessibility features of the iPad and other IOS devices, but also provides additional supports for students with learning disabilities. The rest of this ebook will focus on five specific techniques ebook authors can implement to make their content more accessible to a wide range of students.

1.Use headings to provide a structure

An accessibility best practice for ePub authoring with Pages is to use headings to divide your content into sections. The use of headings will benefit students with a number of different disabilities: students with cognitive disabilities will find content that has been split up into sections less intimidating than a long passage of text without any breaks in it. students with learning disabilities can benefit from having the structure of the document made more explicit through the use of headings. students with visual disabilities can use the headings for easier navigation of long documents. The headings in an ePub document can be used to automatically build a table of contents. Students with visual disabilities can use the table of contents to navigate to any location in an ebook with the VoiceOver screen reader included with Apples mobile devices.

2. Make images accessible to VoiceOver

VoiceOver is the screen reader included with IOS on Apples mobile devices. With VoiceOver, students with visual disabilities who are not able to see what is on the display can instead have the content read aloud to them. When combined with the iBooks ebook reader app on IOS devices, VoiceOver is an excellent means for providing access to text for students who have visual disabilities. However, to ensure that all of the content in

an ebook is accessible, it is necessary to ensure that images have proper descriptions (or alternate text). There are two ways that you can include a description for an image in your ePub document: You can provide a text caption along with the image. This text caption can be read by VoiceOver. You can use a workaround to include alternative text for each image by changing the file name of each image before you add it to your ePub document. Of the two options, the first will be the easiest to implement. You can see an example of this technique in this ebook. I have provided a text caption below each embedded video, since VoiceOver treats these videos in much the same way it does images. The second technique, which was shared with me by Apple engineer Tim Wilson, takes advantage of the fact that VoiceOver will read the file name of each image when it comes across it an ePub document opened with iBooks. For this technique to work, you will need to change the file name of each image before you add it to the ePub document in Pages. To change the file name, click on the image file once, then wait a few seconds and click on it one more time to make the file name text editable. You should then be able to replace the file name with the desired alternative text. Once you have replaced the file name with the desired alternative text, you can add the image to your ePub document in Pages by choosing Insert, Choose and locating the image file on your computer. You need to make sure each image you insert into your ePub document is added as an inline object.

3. Include captions for enhanced books

Closed captions provide a way for students who are deaf or who have other hearing disabilities to access information presented in audio format. Other students can also benefit from closed captions, including: students who speak English as a second language, or those who have low literacy. students who benefit from content presented in multiple modalities and visual learners. students accessing the video in a context where the audio cannot be heard (think a busy student union building where you might be trying to preview a video without headphones) or when there is a need to be silent (while waiting in the lobby of a building, at the library, etc.). In both scenarios, the content would still be accessible by turning on the captions. students viewing an old film with poor sound quality, or one where the people on-screen have a heavy accent that is difficult to understand. anyone who is not familiar with the vocabulary of the topic covered in a a video or podcast. Activity 1. Using the Notes feature available in iBooks, provide an additional example of a situation where you or your students could have benefited from having captions available. Creating closed captioned videos is beyond the scope of this ebook, but there are many excellent tutorials available online on this topic. A good place to start is the Tech Ease 4 All website at the Florida Center for Instructional Technology. Under the web accessibility section of the site you will find the following tutorials that will help you set up your computer for closed captioning with MovieCaptioner. This is an inexpensive

program for captioning QuickTime video files on the Mac which can be purchased from the Synchrimedia website. Captioning Guidelines Setting Up Your Computer for Captioning with MovieCaptioner Closed Captioning QuickTime Movies with MovieCaptioner Fine Tuning Captions Created with MovieCaptioner The iBooks app (as of version 1.3) does not display the captions properly. However, by using a workaround, you can provide access to a captioned version of each video that will open in the mobile Safari web browser. The workaround will require you to include a link to a captioned version of each video on a web server where it can be accessed with the mobile Safari web browser available on IOS devices. Unfortunately, the captions cannot be turned off in mobile Safari, but this at least provides an alternative for those students who need the captions. You can see in this action by tapping on the link for the captioned version of each video embedded in this ebook.

4. Emphasize cognitive interactivity

Cognitive interactivity differs from interface interactivity. Whereas interface interactivity refers to the interactions of the learner with the buttons and other controls available in an app, cognitive interactivity refers to the thinking and reflection that takes place when the learner engages with the content in an ebook or other application. There are several strategies for emphasizing cognitive interactivity in your ebooks: ask questions throughout your ebook that keep students cognitively engaged with the content. As much as possible, these questions should focus on the higher levels of Blooms Taxonomy (analyze, evaluate and create). An example was the activity in the captioning section where I asked you to relate what you just read to your own needs and situation. at the end of each section, ask students to summarize the content using the 1-2-3 method: what they thought the main idea of the section or chapter was, two things they have learned, and three questions that they have. This quick summary can be created as a note using the Notes features in iBooks. Activity 2. Using the Notes feature, brainstorm three additional ways in which you could provide more cognitive interactivity for your students in your ebooks.

5. Keep up with the evolving ePub standard

The future of the ePub standard with regard to accessibility is bright. The latest version of the standard, version 3.0, includes a number of accessibility enhancements as a result of the close collaboration between the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF) and the DAISY Consortium. The IDFP maintains the standards for the ePub format, while the DAISY Consortium has been responsible for developing the DAISY format for Digital Talking Books.

Examples of the improved accessibility of ebooks based on the 3.0 standard are already available in the Read and Listen section of the iBookstore. This new section includes books that feature narration by a real human voice rather than text to speech. The narration can also be synchronized with the text and include highlighting that will change the color of the text as it is read back by the narrator. These features will be beneficial to both new readers as well as students with learning and cognitive disabilities who could use the additional visual supports. The books on the Read and Listen section of the iBookstore are an example of the new media overlay features available in ePub 3.0. In order to take advantage of these new features available in the ebooks sold through the Read and Listen section of the iBookstore, you will need to upgrade to iBooks 1.3 (this is a free upgrade). Also, note that the selection of books currently available is limited to a few childrens books that feature limited text. If you are interested in learning more about the creation of ebooks like the ones available in the Read and Listen section of the iBookstore, I highly recommend Liz Castros website. In addition to a mini-guide to fixed layout ePub documents (the kind available on the Read and Listen section of the iBookstore), Castro also has a photography book for sale that shows off some of the scripting capabilities coming to ePub (such as the ability to hide/show content with a tap). Activity 3. The purpose of this activity is to give you a glimpse at the future of accessibility with ePub 3.0. To complete this activity, open this link to go to the Read and Listen section of the iBookstore, then select one of the available ebooks and download a sample. Once you have the sample open in iBooks, tap the Read aloud icon in the upper right (it looks like a speaker) and choose Start Reading. You can control the volume of the narration, as well as turn on automatic page turning.

Further Reading
To keep up with the latest developments related to ePub accessibility, I recommend the following sites: ePub 3 Overview: an overview of the latest features added to the ePub standard. This page includes a section on new accessibility enhancements, including information on the media overlay feature used to create Read and Listen ebooks. Creating a POUR Website: although this tutorial from WebAIM focuses on web sites, the principles presented also apply to other formats used on the web. The site provides a good overview of the general principles for accessibility as represented by the acronym POUR: content should be perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust. Creating Effective Alt Text: again, this information from WebAIM is intended for web design, but many of the same principles apply to other formats such as ePub. The information on this site will help you create effective alternate or alt text for your images in your ePub documents. Captioning Key: the National Association of the Deaf maintains this website which includes captioning guidelines for creating effective captions for your videos. Liz Castros Blog: Castro has written several mini-guides for ePub authors, including one that focuses on fixed-layout ePub documents. Her blog is a good source for the latest information on the ePub standard as well as examples that show new features in action.

Apple Distinguished Educator Profile

Luis Perez
Apple Distinguished Educator Class of 2009 University of South Florida iTeach Initiative Technical Specialist Tampa, Florida

Luis Perez is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Special Education at the University of South Florida. He served as the Project Manager of the Tech Ease 4 All website, a collection of assistive technology and web accessibility tutorials hosted by the Florida Center for Instructional Technology at USF. Currently, he provides professional development and technology integration support to faculty and students in the iTeach Initiative of the USF College of Education. Luis maintains a Mobile Learning 4 Special Needs wiki at http:// www.mbl4sn.com, and he has presented on accessibility and assistive technology at national and international conferences including those of the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC), the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) and the International Technology and People with Disabilities Conference (CSUN).

About the Program

The Apple Distinguished Educators (ADE) program was created to recognize K-12 and higher education pioneers who are using a variety of Apple products to transform teaching and learning. Today it has grown into a worldwide community of visionary educators and innovative leaders who are doing amazing things with technology in and out of the classroom.

http://www.apple.com/education/ade/

See the incredible content ADEs are sharing on iTunes U. Watch their creative teaching ideas in action and then see the students amazing results. Learn how educators are engaging students with mobile devices and personalizing learning like never before. Experience some of the projects happening in classrooms around the world. http://www.apple.com/education/ade/itunesu/

2011 Apple Distinguished Educator Community