Accessible Digital Publishing Survey
June 2020
In order to better understand the needs of publishing professionals intervening in different stages in the book production process, a short questionnaire was devised and circulated with the help of key networks working in the area. The questionnaire also served to raise awareness about inclusive publishing and share project objectives with target audiences.
The questionnaire was built using LimeSurvey and was available in four languages: English, French, German and Dutch. Responses were anonymous.
A full list of questions can be found in the annexes of this report.
In order to match needs to particular profiles within the publishing lifecycle, the questionnaire opened with some contextual questions.
The questionnaire then sought to identify
The questionnaire concluded with an invitation for those respondents who might be keen to support testing to provide contact details.
The questionnaire was in circulation from 1 March to 30 April 2020. The following organisations were instrumental in circulating the questionnaire in their networks:
89 respondents completed the survey from beginning to end, and 46 left the survey before completion. Only the 89 full responses were considered in the below findings.
The survey revealed that accessibility is on the radar in the publishing sector in France, The Netherlands, Austria and the handful of other countries represented in the 89 responses. Not all publishers, however, are sufficiently equipped to meet their obligations.
Of the 89 respondents, 79 indicated that their organisations offer digital publications. PDF continues to be the dominant format, but significant numbers of organisations are beginning to offer titles in EPUB. Almost half are in EPUB2 which, unlike EPUB3, is not capable of accommodating full accessibility features.
Findings confirm that publishers work with a myriad of propriety and custom tools for the production of their publications. Regardless of the technical environment, however, most publications pass through mainstream solutions such as Microsoft Word and Adobe InDesign at some point in the process.
When it comes to embedding accessibility requirements into existing workflows, the results are promising; there are a number of tasks which have the potential to improve accessibility that publishing professionals are already familiar with. These include structuring texts through the application of stylesheets, ensuring that footnotes, endnotes, indexes and glossaries are programmatically implemented, and ensuring that fonts and layouts are responsive. Indeed, of the 45 respondents that report not yet having recognised accessibility measures in place, many are already completing tasks that, if implemented correctly, could directly impact the accessibility of their titles.
While the business case for “inclusive publishing” or “accessible publishing” appears to be widely accepted by those who are familiar with these concepts, over 30% of all respondents claimed to have not yet taken steps to integrate accessibility measures into their workflows, and 23% indicated they were not sure how to go about doing this. As much as 18% of respondents claimed not to be familiar with the terms "inclusive publishing" or "accessible publishing" and several respondents expressed a fear that following accessibility requirements might compromise the quality of their publications.
Over 50% of respondents consider accessibility to be a social and moral responsibility, and over 40% consider that meeting accessibility requirements brings about quality improvements for all users of digital products. Only 3% felt there would be no benefit to providing accessible digital publications.
15% of respondents benefit from an individual or team tasked with overseeing accessibility and 11% require that service providers and freelancers comply with accessibility requirements. 6% run accessibility checks before publication.
Only a handful of publishers have received some form of accessibility training, and these are mostly respondents intervening towards the end of the book production phase.
Publishers are clear on what learning material they would like to see developed as part of the project; there is an unequivocal need for best practices, practical examples and implementations. Core topics such as graphic and layout considerations, providing text alternatives to images, implementing a rich navigation, running quality assurance tests and understanding accessibility guidelines came out as the most popular topics. Material around creating accessible interactive components and question types, however, appears to be less in demand across the board, but of particular interest to the educational publishing sector.
The content will primarily focus on best practices and practical information requested by the survey respondents. All material will take account of the current legal and technical framework and advocate the creation of born accessible publications in EPUB3.
Given the fact that as many as 16 respondents claim not to be familiar with the terms “accessible publishing” and “inclusive publishing,” the platform will provide background information and context to ensure that these concepts are both tangible and achievable.
Building on findings that indicate that organisations are already familiar with some of the tasks associated with improving accessibility, the platform will provide instructional and practical material that will leverage these capabilities in widely-used applications such as Microsoft Word and Adobe InDesign.
Given that only a limited number of respondents indicated that they run quality control for accessibility compliancy, the platform will ensure learners are given practical material to support checks and quality management.
Recognising that accessibility is the responsibility of all members of the organisation – and not only those who intervene at the end of the production process – the learning material will be geared towards professionals working across all areas of expertise, including design, management and editorial.
While developing content, project partners will need to take into account the fact that the awareness, knowledge and skills associated with inclusive publishing are relatively developed in some publishers and entirely absent from others. Instructional materials will be designed to support the different stages of learning by providing learning materials that raise awareness, create new knowledge and build skills.
To help learners put new knowledge and skills into practice, the platform will provide activities for on the job training. These activities will aim to be software agnostic where possible, since findings show that publishers use a wide variety of software packages. It will, however, be necessary to address specific processes in some of the core software environments used across the sector, namely Microsoft Word and Adobe InDesign.
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