Ready for implementation: User Experience Guide for Displaying Accessibility Metadata

Dear Publishing Business, Community, and Working Group members,

The  W3C Publishing Community Group is pleased to announce the release of The “User Experience Guide for Displaying Accessibility Metadata” version 1.0, which can be found at:
https://www.w3.org/publishing/a11y/UX-Guide-metadata/principles/

Avneesh Singh from DAISY Consortium, who led the accessibility task force for developing these guidelines stated, our objective is to help digital bookstores, libraries, and other distributors of digital content to display accessibility metadata in an user-friendly way to the end users, enabling them to make informed decision before they buy or download the publications. We will be updating these guidelines and techniques regularly as the accessibility metadata evolve and the metadata formats are harmonized further. Congratulations to our editors Charles LaPierre and  Gregorio Pellegrino and all the participants of the accessibility task force for accomplishing the first milestone.

Background: Finding, buying, and finally reading a publication is a very personal experience. For most of us this is routine. We go to a bookstore, search for the title we are interested in or perhaps browse the best sellers list, then purchase and start reading the publication. Now consider you are blind and rely on an assistive technology to read the publication. You wonder: will my screen reader work with this title; are there image descriptions that will be spoken to describe these images; are there page numbers which are accessible; is the reading order correct so I don't hear a “caution” after reading a paragraph which could be dangerous? These are just a few of the accessibility concerns consumers have when trying to purchase and ultimately read a digital publication.
The good news is more and more publishers are creating publications that are Born Accessible (i.e., accessible from the outset, not fixed later) and getting the accessibility validation or audit done by independent organizations.

This document proposes a shared framework for presenting publication accessibility metadata in a user-friendly manner

Publishers that produce Born Accessible books and publications are eager to have the accessibility of their publications exposed to the marketplace. The EPUB Accessibility Conformance and Discoverability Specification defines the required accessibility metadata that must be included in conforming publications. The User Experience Guide goes on to explain how to present the very technical accessibility metadata in a user-friendly way that is easy to understand.

Persons with disabilities should be able to discover the accessibility of a publication before they buy or borrow. Likewise, educators must be able to select from the most accessible materials available for their students.

We believe that having this accessibility metadata available wherever digital materials are obtained will lead to a focus on the procurement of Born Accessible digital publications, which in turn will lead to Born Accessible publications becoming the norm in society.

We look forward to questions, comments and participation from people who read, publishers, and  librarians, educators, and distributors, and by search engine implementers. We want distributors to expose the accessibility metadata in their libraries and bookstores, and we want end users to demand to find accessibility metadata wherever they obtain their reading materials.

Please provide comments and feedback using the GitHub issue tracker referenced in the publication. If it’s not feasible for you to use GitHub, send comments in e-mail to: public-publishingcg@w3.org
       
Sincerely,
Avneesh Singh, DAISY Consortium, Accessibility Task Force lead,   of the Publishing Community Group
Charles LaPierre, Benetech, co-editor, 
Gregorio Pellegrino, LIA, co-editor,
Matt Garrish, DAISY Consortium, Task Force member,
Ivan Herman, Technical Lead for Publishing@W3C