1. Global Certified Accessible
6/27/2011
Global Certified Accessible
Good morning everyone and welcome to the Benetech webinar on our new certification program -- Global Certified Accessible.
Charles LaPierre, Technical Lead, DIAGRAM and Born Accessible
Robin Seaman, Director of Content
Digital Image and Graphics Resources for Accessible Materials

2. Benetech Accessibility Initiatives
6/27/2011
Benetech Accessibility Initiatives
Born Accessible: Creating accessible books from the start
Born Accessible is a partnership with publishers and content creators to help them build accessibility into books when they are first created. Global Certified Accessible is a new program supporting the Born Accessible vision.
DIAGRAM Center: Building new paths to accessibility
DIAGRAM is a research and development center that creates tools, standards and best practices to support different learning needs.
This is becoming the flagship initiative under our Born Accessible program -- which has been all about influencing publishers to create content that is accessible from the get go. It taps into the work done in all three of our Global Literacy Initiatives -- Bookshare -- through our work evaluating hundreds of thousands of files -- we’re about to hit 600,00 -- and the DIAGRAM Center’s work on tools and best practices.
Bookshare: Making reading accessible
Bookshare is the world’s largest library of accessible ebooks and lets people with visual, physical, and learning disabilities such as dyslexia read in ways that work for them. Bookshare Private Label is a new program offering international libraries a turnkey accessible library.

3. Global Certified Accessible (GCA)
6/27/2011
Global Certified Accessible (GCA)
Benetech establishes Global Certified Accessible to ensure content serves all students equally
Launched June 2017
Input from DAISY to shape the certification process
Early supporters of Global Certified Accessible whose feedback helped shape the program include Penguin Random House, Elsevier, HarperCollins Publishers, Harvard Business Publishing, Macmillan Learning, Amnet Systems (OUP, Springer, Duke U. Press and others), and Apex CoVantage
Ingram Content Group’s VitalSource® and CoreSource® will promote certification to their publishers and include certification metadata in their catalog feed to retailers
We came up with the idea over a year ago -- in the summer of when we started talking with DAISY about developing ACE and how we could contribute.
It gave us the perfect pretext to engage with publishers about workflow and born accessible.
But, what quickly dawned on us was that this was actually a golden opportunity to bring born accessible to life by offering to review a publisher’s files, advise them on their accessibility compliance and then -- CERTIFY files as being accessible. Give them the Benetech Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.
So -- we reached out to a few committed partners and -- after Charles built a dynamite file evaluation template that has now gone through over a hundred iterations -- launched a pilot with them. They gave us files -- and we gave them feedback, discussion, and advice, coaching, consolation when things went badly and kudos when they went well.
Digital Image and Graphics Resources for Accessible Materials

4. Global Certified Accessible Participating Partners
6/27/2011
Global Certified Accessible Participating Partners
Benetech
DAISY Consortium
Dedicon
RNIB
Vision Australia
We’ve reached out to our DAISY friends internationally to see who might be interested in joining us in this endeavor and we have commitments from the RNIB, Dedicon in the Netherlands, and Vision Australia.
Digital Image and Graphics Resources for Accessible Materials

5. How we got here

6. Benetech’s Pilot Reviewed 40 titles from the following Publishers
6/27/2011
Benetech’s Pilot
Reviewed 40 titles from the following Publishers
Macmillan Learning
Amnet (Conversion Vendor) –Including:
Springer
Duke University Press
Oxford University Press
University Press of Kentucky
Demos Medical
Wiley
Penguin Random House
Harvard Business Press
Elsevier
Over the last 15 months, it’s been a really fascinating experience to do a deep dive into publishers’ files and engage with them about their accessibility strategy.
Our pilot program, launched in August of last year and over the course of the year we evaluated 40 files from 10 publishers.
The program has now morphed into an even more dynamic process. We’ll be going out in January and February and meeting with publishers and pitching a program that will involve in-depth file reviews -- the Charles Experience -- and essentially accrediting publishers as being accessible once they’ve proven their process consistently produces full conforming files.
Digital Image and Graphics Resources for Accessible Materials

7. Conformance Review
For each title we performed a manual in-depth review:
WCAG Compliance (A and AA)
Image Accessibility
HTML Tags
General A11Y
Language
Structure Nav.
Links
Lists
Tables
Notes
Metadata (required and optional)
EPUB specific accessibility 1.0 requirements

8. Average Born Accessible Scores
Image Accessibility 57 %
HTML Tags 73 %
General A11Y 73 %
Language %
Structure Nav %
Links %
Lists %
Tables %
Notes %
Metadata (optional) 2 %
Metadata (required) 26 %
Page Navigation 69 %
WCAG Compliance 26 %

9. Sample: Summary
Title: Road Runner - Not a Myth Publisher: Acme Inc. Author(s): Wiley Coyote Sr. Package Metadata (Required): FAIL Page and Publication: FAIL Page Navigation: PASS Media Overlays Playback: N/A Overall 1.0 Compliant: FAIL Born Accessible Score: 25.5% Overall WCAG Compliance Reached: FAIL EPUB Complexity Score: 4 - Very Complex

10. Sample: Born Accessible Scores
Image Accessibility: 39% WCAG FAIL Audio Accessibility: 22% WCAG FAIL Video Accessibility: 0% WCAG FAIL HTML Tags: 29% WCAG FAIL General Accessibility: 29% WCAG FAIL Language: 100% WCAG Level-A Structured Navigation: 17% WCAG FAIL Links: 90% WCAG Level-A Lists: 50% WCAG FAIL Tables: 0% WCAG FAIL Notes: 75% WCAG Level-A Java Script: 0% WCAG FAIL MathML: 0% Package Metadata (Optional):50% DPUB ARIA (Future): N/A Born Accessible Total Score 25.5%

11. Certification Pilot Results

12. Accessibility Tips

13. Important Things to Note (1 of 4)
6/27/2011
Important Things to Note (1 of 4)
All headings must be marked in the HTML as headings (critical for navigation).
All textual content must use HTML text markup, e.g., paragraphs, block quotes, and list items.
All content must have a logical reading order.
Images must be marked as presentation, described in surrounding text, have captions, or have “alt” text.
A conformant EPUB publication must meet the following criteria when it includes page navigation and there a print equivalent book:
must provide a means of locating the page break locations
must identify the source of the page breaks
Digital Image and Graphics Resources for Accessible Materials

14. Important Things to Note (2 of 4)
All images requiring description must have a short alt text (200 characters if possible0.
Decorative images must have alt=“” and we recommend also including role=“presentation”
The hierarchy of <h1>–<h6> is often misapplied or doesn’t cascade properly. Skipped heading levels and missing top-level headers are a common mistake.
Many EPUBs incorrectly code the <title> of the HTML file (i.e., including the title of the ebook but not that chunk of HTML).

15. Important Things to Note (3 of 4)
There are occasionally validation errors in EPUBs such as metadata that doesn’t meet EPUB 3 standards.
Language shifts are frequently not marked or marked with incorrect language codes as such within the context of the HTML.
Links that have no visual cue and are highlighted with the same color as the text cannot be recognized.
Tabular content is frequently missing a correctly marked-up header row, which is crucial for providing context while a screen reader user is exploring a complex table.

16. Important Things to Note (4 of 4)
There are frequently problems with color contrast such as using very light display colors in headers or other holdovers from print.
Emphases/Strong and Bold/Italic are often confused with each other and thus used incorrectly.
Missing <aside> tags, marking content as secondary, is a frequent misstep.
Define landmarks within the EPUB.

17. Landmarks
Cover
Frontmatter
Title Page
Table of Contents
Bodymatter
Backmatter
Acknowledgements
And more than 100 more landmarks . . .

18. DIAGRAM’s Involvement in Standards
DIAGRAM played a vital role in the first ever release of the Accessibility 1.0 Specification (January 2017).
Finally, we have a line drawn in the sand that shows publishers what it means to make a fully accessible EPUB..
DIAGRAM played a critical role in getting the accessibility metadata needed for conformance and discoverability into schema.org.
Important: This metadata does not only apply to EPUB but has a wider reach and can be added to just about anything on the internet.

19. Beyond WCAG A / AA EPUB 1.0 Accessibility Specification Baseline
MUST meet WCAG-A
EXCEPTION – Long descriptions for complex images are not needed for conformance. Only alt- text is required.
Even reaching WCAG-AA does not require long descriptions.
If long descriptions are provided the only way to find out that they are present is to look at these metadata fields:
accessibilityFeature (for “longDescription”)
accessibilitySummary (to see if long descriptions are called out)

20. Metadata

21. Discoverability: Metadata Requirements to Be Compliant
6/27/2011
Accessibility Metadata
Must include the following [schema.org] metadata:
accessMode
accessibilityFeature
accessibilityHazard
accessibilitySummary
Digital Image and Graphics Resources for Accessible Materials

22. Sample acessMode
accessMode: textual
accessMode: visual (any images present besides decorative and the cover)

23. Sample accessibilityFeature
alternativeText
Index
longDescription
printPageNumbers
readingOrder
structuralNavigation
tableOfContents

24. Sample accessibilityHazard
noFlashingHazard
noSoundHazard
noMotionSimulationHazard Or
none

25. Sample accessiblitySummary
This title is a well-marked up and structured book, which is fully accessible. The images in this book are well described and, when necessary, short alt text and/or extended longer descriptions are provided.

26. Tools

27. Ace by DAISY (Accessible Checker for EPUB)
DAISY received a Google Impact Challenge Award to develop Ace:
Open Source
Built on existing HTML checking technology (aXe by Deque) with additional EPUB-specific tests
Has both a command line and API interface
Generates both human and machine readable reports
Performs many tests that can be automated
Identifies areas that need manual inspection
Ace Version 1.0 Released anuary 29, 2018

28. DAISY’s Ace Will Not . . .
Automatically check all accessibility requirements
Certify an EPUB as being conformant
Check for valid EPUB format (recommend using epubcheck)

29. DIAGRAM’s Critical Role
DIAGRAM played a key role in the design, planning, and testing of Ace.
Our unique insights into what publishers were actually doing during our certification pilot helped shape Ace and DAISY’s Knowledge Base.
DIAGRAM continues to contribute to DAISY’s efforts in further developing these tools.

30. Ace HTML Report

31. Ace Report – Violation Details

32. DAISY Knowledge Base

33. Ace Structural Outline
6/27/2011
Ace Structural Outline
Digital Image and Graphics Resources for Accessible Materials

34. Ace HTML Report - Images

35. Certification

36. The GCA Process
Run Ace to automatically check basic accessibility features.
Manually evaluate a dozen specific areas in the EPUB.
Generate a Born Accessible score for each section.
Determine the overall WCAG conformance level for A and AA.
Check against the EPUB Accessibility 1.0 Conformance and Discovery requirements.
Create a detailed report for publishers with their conformance level and overall Born Accessible score.
Recommend steps for remediation.
Review remediation and repeat the process if necessary.
Offer accreditation on an annual basis once publisher demonstrates compliance with a significant set of files.

37. Sample Conformance Metadata
conformsTo: html#wcag-a
certifiedBy: Benetech 2018
certifierCredential: Global Certified Accessible
certifierReport: Link to optional certification report

38. Questions?

39. Charles LaPierre charlesl@benetech.org Robin Seaman
Thank You!
Charles LaPierre
Robin Seaman