Accessibility & e-books
AL$ presentation
11/15/16

John Lee
Disability Resource Center

What are e-books?

E-book

• A book that is read in digital form on a computer, portable e-reader, or other electronic device
• It may or may not be a digital version of a printed book
• Typical e-book formats: PDF, EPUB, DOC, HTML, AZW/MOBI (Kindle)

Why e-books?

They are more accessible

Customizable & Convertible

You can use them on a variety

They're Portable

e-books also allow you to multi-task

Why is e-book accessibility

It can help students with...

Dyslexia

Blindness & Low Vision

Mobility Impairments

English as a second language

Auditory learning preferences

It's the Law

• ADA/Section 504
• Section 508
• Dear Colleague Letter re: e-book readers (from DOJ and DOE)

Students served by DRC

How do students with disabilities

Screen readers

Screen readers

• JAWS, Window-Eyes, NVDA
• TalkBack for Android
• VoiceOver for Mac OS & iOS
• Windows 8/10 Narrator

Text-to-speech reading tools

• Mac OS & iOS built-in text-to-speech
• Android's Google built-in text-to-speech
• Adobe Reader's built-in text-to-speech
• Balabolka free text-to-speech software for Windows
• Voice Dream Reader app iOS/Android
• Read & Write GOLD software license
• Read & Write for Chrome extension

Refreshable braille display

Enlarged font,

What makes e-books accessible?

Accessible Features

• Readable / tagged text
• Logical reading order
• Appropriate heading structure & styles
• Alt text descriptions for images & graphics
• Descriptive links
• Accessible math & science notation
• Closed captions (if videos are included)

Avoid using image PDFs

Challenges of Digital Rights Management

Best Practices for

Accessibility Principles

• Perceivability
• Operability
• Understandability
• Robustness

Accessibility Tools

• Most commonly used accessible file formats - PDF, EPUB 3
• Document Accessibility Toolbar (DAT) - for creating accessible Word docs
• Adobe Acrobat Pro software - for checking & remediating PDF accessibility
• SensusAccess web-based service - for converting image PDFs into "more accessible" PDFs

SensusAccess

accessibility.calpoly.edu

DIRK

Accessible Image Sample Book

floeproject.org

Affordable Learning Solutions

als.csuprojects.org/accessibility

oeraccess.merlot.org

Bookshare.org

FREE TECH TOOLS

Read&Write for Google Chrome

Adobe Reader's "Read Out Loud"

Disability Resource Center
Contact Information

John Lee:
jlee245@calpoly.edu