Westchester Publishing Services

Excellence Delivered

New York Book Forum Presidents Night 2026

Services

Westchester Publishing Services was grateful for the opportunity to sponsor the annual New York Book Forum’s Presidents Night event. Hosted by Macmillan at their downtown Manhattan offices, Presidents Night attracted a crowd of attendees from across the literary world including authors, avid readers, vendors, manufacturers, and staff from publishing houses, ranging from people new in the field to the C-Suite. Part of what makes the New York Book Forum’s events so vibrant is the ability to reach across our own personal disciplines and get to know people in other aspects of our industry.

Authors Equity CEO Madeline McIntosh was the keynote speaker for the evening, and talked about her journey within Penguin Random House (PRH), over to Amazon, back to PRH and rising to the role of CEO there, and ultimately leaving to found Authors Equity with former Macmillan CEO Don Weisberg and Nina von Moltke (also formerly of PRH – and a panelist on our last Publishing Now webinar with Publishers Weekly). McIntosh’s keynote unpacked her career path, with roles including overseeing nascent digital formats at PRH as EPUBs were just about to take off, and how her different roles helped her be an effective CEO.

With an emphasis on curiosity about our industry, McIntosh talked about how her decision to co-launch Authors Equity was based on an openness to bringing authors into the decision-making process at every stage of the life cycle for their book; including reviewing P&L’s, and understanding the potential risks and ROI of decisions regarding the book itself and its distribution and marketing plans. McIntosh shared how authors with an established brand or readership have a genuine understanding of their readers and what makes their books work. This has attracted key authors and projects, including top titles by Joseph Nguyen (The Overthinker’s Guide to Making Decisions), JL Collins’ The Simple Path to Wealth, top puzzle title Puzzlemania by The New York Times Games, and a forthcoming title from Seth Godin.

Has it worked? Numbers don’t lie:slide showing Authors Equity has sold over 2 million books through 2025, generated over $20 million in revenue, and had 50% of their titles released as bestsellers

By focusing on core staff and a network of trusted partners and freelancers, Authors Equity is able to provide a lot of support and options for their authors and their publications. With a list currently numbering in the dozens, it’s a very different model than the Big Five’s approach to publishing, which McIntosh used as an opportunity to answer questions from the room regarding different approaches to acquisitions, manufacturing, and marketing. With bespoke solutions for each book that allow authors to propose unique marketing strategies they know will be effective in reaching the audience they’ve worked hard to develop, Authors Equity gives its authors greater transparency and control of the process, and as shown above, at this scale it’s very successful.

How are you looking at your business differently? Are you considering different manufacturing options or custom editions for your titles? Are you thinking about how to get books to market more quickly? While Westchester’s focus is on the editorial, design, production, and digital phases, we’re always open to talking about ways we can help solve individual pieces of the puzzle, and we certainly know many players in the market who can help with pieces outside our realm of expertise. Contact Us to discuss your publications program and explore any ways we can help you better control schedules, costs, and options for your most important publications.

UPDATE – February 19, 2026: In response to information we understand is present in the market, we want to add a clarification to this article. Some publishers are evaluating ADA Title II from the lens of whether they are a public institution themselves or not, which you should discuss this with your legal counsel. Depending on your organization’s structure, different rules may apply in principle (e.g. a private university-associated publisher may be more directly tied to Title III, but if they accept any federal money for research or other factors, the HHS 504 code that is similar to ADA Title II applies).  Regardless of a publisher’s own structure, though (non-profit, private company, public company, etc.), part of what is driving ADA Title II compliance needs – as covered in our recent podcast – is that library markets are in many cases required or opting to comply with ADA Title II, making this more about complying with the needs of library buyers for publishers of any type. Again, this should be discussed with your legal counsel, but we hope this clarification provides some further consideration about how best to approach ADA Title II within your workflow.

The following information is not a substitute for legal advice. We are providing this analysis for publishing professionals about what has been shared in the public sphere. You should consult with your own legal counsel to make decisions appropriate for your situation.

In April, 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice issued a new rule titled “Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Disability; Accessibility of Web Information and Services of State and Local Government Entities.” This rule clarifies and strengthens the requirements for accessibility of digital content under ADA Title II, specifically targeting state and local government websites, mobile applications, and conventional electronic documents. It becomes effective April 24, 2026, with agencies serving less than 50,000 people receiving an additional year to comply.

What does this mean for you, as a publisher? If you serve library markets, or other markets that comply with ADA guidelines, you should ensure that your content (specifically digital files for your publications – but also other media like parental support materials and HTML files used directly in those channels) comply with these guidelines.

Key Requirements

Similar to the requirements for the EU’s European Accessibility Act (EAA), the rule mandates compliance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Version 2.1 Level AA as the technical standard for all covered digital content, including:

– Websites
– Mobile apps
– Conventional electronic documents such as PDFs, word processor files, presentations, and spreadsheets.

Certain content is exempt from these requirements, including:

– Archived documents
– Preexisting conventional electronic documents, including common file formats like PDFs, Word documents, presentations, and spreadsheets.
– Content posted by third parties not acting on behalf of the government

While EPUB files are not explicitly mentioned in the list of covered formats, the Department of Justice notes that files in formats not listed may qualify for exceptions such as archiving or preexisting files. However, this implies that EPUB files should ideally meet ADA accessibility standards if actively provided.

Challenges in Compliance

Common obstacles to achieving full compliance include:

– Resistance to moving away from traditional formats like PDFs in particular platforms
– Limited financial resources to remediate existing documents
– Lack of empowerment or authority among web staff to enforce accessibility standards
– Difficulty securing senior management buy-in

How can you be prepared?

The new ADA Title II rule underscores the importance of digital accessibility and aims to hold state and local governments accountable for compliance. To meet these requirements by the enforcement deadline, publishers and content providers – again with input from their legal counsel – should:

– Conduct thorough audits of websites, mobile apps, and electronic documents
– Develop remediation plans aligned with WCAG 2.1 Level AA standards
– Engage leadership to secure necessary resources and support
– Empower web and content teams with training and authority to implement changes

For additional guidance and best practices, the U.S. Access Board’s 508 Best Practices Webinar (September 16, 2025) offers valuable insights into effective compliance strategies. This recent webinar hosted by Ingram Content Group, and featuring speakers from Benetech, VitalSource, consultant Laura Brady, and Westchester Publishing Services provides practical guidance for publishers and is worth viewing.

Let Westchester know what we can do to help. Contact Us to discuss your publications program, with options for accessible-first content on new titles from editorial through to production, to standalone digital conversion and remediation services. We are here to help!

IPG conference banner for September 16, 2025, with Westchester logo in lower right hand cornerAs always, the Independent Publishers Guild (IPG) put on a stellar Autumn Conference at the Shaw Theatre in London, on Tuesday, September 16. Westchester staff Dan Verdick (Director, Client Solutions) and Tyler M. Carey (Chief Revenue Officer) represented us at the conference. Tyler also moderated a panel on accessibility – “Publishers’ Journeys in Accessibility” which featured speakers Achim Bosse Chitty, Divisional Head of Production at Bloomsbury Publishing, Megan Taylor, Partnerships Manager from Boydell & Brewer, James Woollam, Managing Director of David & Charles Publishing, and digital publishing consultant, Simon Mellins.

At the end of this post, we provide links to articles with soup to nuts coverage of the event. Here are several important observations from Dan and Tyler’s feet-on-the-ground vantage point:

Tyler shared, “Publishers seemed to be carrying more stress and concern at this event than we saw at London Book Fair and some of the intervening summer get togethers across the markets we serve. There was an emphasis on managing costs in many of our discussions with prospective partners and clients. A potential pathway to achieve this is through the use of AI, where the client’s IP is protected in walled gardens and the use cases are repeatable and consistent. One publisher, for instance, was very curious to discuss use cases Westchester has for AI on alt text and other compliance requirements for accessibility – but they volunteered they were less comfortable with the idea of using AI for copyediting, proofreading, and anything where language and style may need to be more rigorous across a larger piece of content than how a brief alt text entry is crafted. Dan and I also chatted with several publishers who were exceptionally bullish on using AI throughout their operation – with content as well as routinized tasks that they see as having high potential to be automated through AI. The hope for some publishers in the latter group is that they can leverage AI as a tool to help manage the headwinds of increased manufacturing costs while also maintaining current staffing levels and growing their current list sizes.”

podium with a microphone and banner for IPG behind it. To left of podium a man in a blue pullover and blue blazer is speaking and holding a half-full glass of water in his right hand.Dan’s conversations with our clients and prospects opened up a lot of dialogue about EPUB accessibility. “Westchester’s hosting the panel on accessibility drove booth traffic and dialogue about our processes for remediating and converting ePubs. As a Benetech GCA-certified vendor, we are externally audited each year to ensure we’re providing as high a level of quality and service in creating accessible EPUB files as possible. Discussions about alt text, language shift tagging, and speed of conversion and remediation were plentiful, as well as our ability to scale up for larger batches of titles to be made accessible. I give a lot of credit to our panelists for being transparent about their successes and struggles on this front, and for the ongoing discussions about making sure there’s a plan for key backlist and more.”

The “Make GEO Work for You” session offered a fascinating discussion of Generative Engine Optimisation, the latest buzz-worthy acronym for discoverability and content management in the AI-driven “next Internet,” where bots crawl the Web looking for vulnerable content they can scrape, and where Web visitors and clicks may be bots, too. Lead by George Walkley, the session’s panel debated the balance between gatekeeping content vs. having enough content for AI and search engines to find and learn more for a human searcher’s needs, and other aspects of content in a GEO online space. “Auditing your content’s digital footprint and further steps were discussed,” Dan added. “And for journals publishers, there was also extensive discussion of the risks for content that is available for AI-driven engines and what subscribers may be accessing as well.” To learn more about AI and GEO, George is a panelist for BISG’s September 30 webinar, “AI and Ethics in the Book Industry” which will discuss frameworks, strategies, and real-world lessons on navigating AI’s promise and its pitfalls.

A group of four people standing on a brick sidewalk outside a building in London.
l to r: Dan Verdick, Rebecca Durose-Croft, Emma Hudson, Tyler M. Carey

In addition to the trade and academic publishing discussions which took place at IPG, Westchester’s UK-based education team, Managing Director Rebecca Durose-Croft and Content Director Emma Hudson, joined Dan and Tyler to visit key edtech and education publishing customers in the UK to discuss the latest trends in these spaces. “Helping publishers deal with any and all changes in today’s world, from CEID reviews of content for today’s learners, to changing format needs for online content, were part of our customer discussions,” Dan added. “Our team discussed a range of needs UK publishers have in markets they serve around the world, and how adapting to the almost daily changes in educational publishing are vital to success and growth during what is an uncertain time in some education markets.”

For more coverage about the IPG Autumn Conference and session content, you can read this article in The Bookseller and several posts from Bookbrunch, including this article (login or subscription may be required to both sites). The IPG did a phenomenal job bringing the British publishing industry together to talk about the pressures on small and mid-sized publishers, opportunities for addressing those challenges, and providing excellent professional development for everyone attending. We’re looking forward to seeing our friends and colleagues at the next IPG event.

As your plans take shape with your 2026 lists, talk with us about solutions we provide to make your workflow more effective and increase speed to market for your titles.

On Wednesday, May 21, Westchester Publishing Services sponsored the IPG Summer Summit virtual event. The day featured several sessions covering tariffs, metadata, marketing, and accessibility. A full day, indeed!

Westchester’s Chief Revenue Officer Tyler Carey moderated the panel on accessibility, which featured panelists Julie Willis (Editorial Director and Systems Lead from Westchester, speaking on behalf of an absent client), Eileen Reilly (Digital Production Manager at Princeton University Press), and Michael Johnson (Vice President of Content from Benetech).

The IPG will be sharing the slides and video shortly, and we’ll update this blog post with those assets once they are available. But in the interim, here are the key topics that were covered:

  • The EAA deadline is approaching fast – June 28, 2025!
  • Julie and Eileen talked about the steps that two IPG-member presses are taking to prepare, including:
    • Evaluating all of the titles in your backlist in your ONIX feed and sales data, with a consideration towards remediation costs in mind. Titles that have high sales volume are being remediated first, but documenting decisions and future plans by title is also important. If a title is challenged for inaccessibility, being able to provide documentation regarding the accessibility plan for that title is a strategy that some publishers are taking to minimise risk.
    • Setting up author guidelines for the creation of alt text – like these ones on Princeton University Press’ site – is a key step to bringing accessibility into the process early on a frontlist title, and giving authors agency to write or influence the alt text of their content. Julie talked about the importance of this – especially on academic titles that go through peer review – as the author holds responsibility for the content in many cases.
    • Joining PAAG, DAISY, and Benetech’s GCA program, so that you have access to up-to-date information on accessibility practices and legislation.
  • Michael shared Benetech’s approach to accessibility, and answered questions on topics including:
    • Alt text – Michael shared guidance on the different needs for different use cases for an image. An image of the Eiffel Tower in a cookbook on crêpes might be decorative, and could be labelled as such. In a travel guide for Paris the same image might merit a description of the Eiffel Tower for a reader having the text read aloud to them. For a book on engineering, the same image might bear an alt text entry about its construction from iron instead of steel, augmenting what is in the text through a description of the Eiffel Tower’s structure itself.
    • Language shift tagging – this topic has been coming up more and more often for publishers exploring the requirements for WCAG AA standards, as they try to get ahead of the baseline level A standards inferred to be required for the EAA. Michael talked to how casual use terms and place names do not need to be tagged, but passages and alternating dialogue in different languages, as examples, should be tagged.
  • Lastly, best practices to really understand and embrace accessibility were discussed, including the recommendation to download Thorium or another accessible reading software, so that you can have your EPUB files read aloud to you to better understand the end user’s experience. Between this process and auditing ACE by DAISY reports on your titles, you will be better equipped to have quality accessible EPUB files that don’t just meet standards but also address the needs of end users.

Stay tuned for more accessibility information from Westchester, and please do visit our online repository of accessibility information, including this white paper.

What a year, right? With the approach of the EAA, decisions publishers are making about WCAG compliance, Title II, and Amazon changing its deliverable epub formats (again), the Westchester staff have been hearing quite a lot from our clients. To help address our clients’ questions, and also share information more widely, we put together this brief blog post about some key topics related to digital content and workflows, to help share our perspective and institutional knowledge.

Language Tagging Manuscripts

The goal of language tagging is to ensure that assistive technology can correctly interpret phrases, passages, and certain individual words presented in other than the document’s primary language. It is a requirement for meeting WCAG 2.x Level AA. It is worth noting, at this point the EAA does not explicitly require WCAG 2.x Level AA, but some publishers are more actively pursuing this higher level of standard to stay ahead of the game in case clarifications or new requirements force this requirement over time.

Language tagging is not necessarily needed on every publication. The stated exclusions to this rule are “proper names, technical terms, words of indeterminate language, and words or phrases that have become part of the vernacular.”

The proper names exclusion is taken to apply to “people, places, organizations” (and the like) per CMOS Shoptalk, the Random House Guide to Good Writing (Ivers 1991, which specifically adds “churches, streets”), and DAISY (which helpfully renders this simply as “names”). Titles of works are not part of this exclusion; see, for instance, the article “Declaring language in HTML” where the W3C uses a book title for their example. Technical Terms This exclusion applies to terms which have a technical meaning across languages. WCAG gives the examples of Homo sapiens, Alpha Centauri, hertz, and habeas corpus. In practice, especially within academic publishing and if the tagging is handled by a non-specialist, such terms can be harder to identify. Generally, any jargon falls into this category, but an understanding of the intended audience may also factor into whether to tag or not. Indeterminate Language Gibberish and most constructed languages belong to this category, but Esperanto has an ISO language code, as do Tolkien’s Elvish languages of Quenya and Sindarin, and Star Trek’s Klingon, so all those can be tagged. Part of the Vernacular Foreign words or phrases that find themselves in the English dictionary (to take this from the English perspective) may be excluded from tagging. WCAG gives “rendezvous” as an example. A perhaps better example would be “sine qua non.” If the text in question is italicized, and it’s not to show emphasis or to state the word as a word, that may be a good indication that it should be tagged. WCAG advises, “If there is doubt whether a change in language is intended, consider whether the word would be pronounced the same (except for accent or intonation) in the language of the immediately surrounding text.”

Amazon no longer supporting MOBI Fixed Layout files

As of March 18, 2025, Amazon no longer supports MOBI fixed-layout files. This is similar to when Amazon stopped supporting MOBI files for reflowable books on August 1, 2021. One difference is that besides EPUB, there is an alternate Amazon-specific format which may be more appropriate for some content, Kindle Package Format (KPF). If you are an Ingram CoreSource customer, they are setup to accept this format, and so digital asset management on their platform will be a seamless transition from FXL MOBI to FXL KPF. If you already have content posted to Amazon in the older format, you are not required to update it for it to remain on sale. But if you do update an existing file (e.g. to handle reprint corrections, replace back ads, etc.) you will be required to upload the new file in the KPF format.

Metadata

Rich accessibility metadata in EPUB and ONIX goes beyond ticking a standards box. It actively improves discovery and usability for readers, unlocks new markets, aids institutional buyers (libraries/education), and bolsters a publisher’s social responsibility image. Accessibility metadata within EPUBs makes them self-descriptive about their accessible features, helping users and systems find suitable titles. ONIX metadata allows distributors to “present this information to potential purchasers and readers” ahead of time, so they can make informed choices. Industry groups like DAISY and Accessible Publishing Learning Network (APLN) provide guidance on how to implement this metadata (see DAISY’s Inclusive Publishing “Metadata” page, which provided the preceding quote, and APLN’s “Accessibility Metadata Best Practices for Ebooks”), so that every accessible feature is documented and visible and may benefit users and publishers alike.

To comply with the EAA, metadata should be provided for the relevant accessibility items, particularly those from Codelist 196 and Codelist 143, though other metadata may apply as well (e.g., Codelist 81).

Whatever database or title management system you use to manage your metadata should have fields that correspond to the ONIX codes.

If you’re unsure of which accessibility features are included in your EPUB, you may get most of those details from an Ace report.

Probably the best resource (with explanations and examples of both EPUB and ONIX metadata) is the DAISY Accessible Publishing Knowledge Base metadata page. It still requires some technical understanding though.

The accessibility metadata in a typical EPUB for a non-fiction book with images, and which has been produced with the intent to be accessible, would look something like the following:

<meta property=”schema:accessibilityFeature”>ARIA</meta>
<meta property=”schema:accessibilityFeature”>displayTransformability</meta>
<meta property=”schema:accessibilityFeature”>pageBreakMarkers</meta>
<meta property=”schema:accessibilityFeature”>pageNavigation</meta>
<meta property=”schema:accessibilityFeature”>readingOrder</meta>
<meta property=”schema:accessibilityFeature”>structuralNavigation</meta>
<meta property=”schema:accessibilityFeature”>tableOfContents</meta>
<meta property=”schema:accessibilityFeature”>index</meta>
<meta property=”schema:accessibilityFeature”>alternativeText</meta>
<meta property=”schema:accessMode”>textual</meta>
<meta property=”schema:accessMode”>visual</meta>
<meta property=”schema:accessModeSufficient”>textual,visual</meta>
<meta property=”schema:accessModeSufficient”>textual</meta>
<meta property=”schema:accessibilityHazard”>none</meta>

This is not an exhaustive list. Other features may be present (MathML or long descriptions, for example), conformance level may be identified, and a summary (no longer required) should be included with other relevant info, especially if any shortcomings. And these accessibility metadata items are of course to be included in addition to standard metadata such title, author, and source ISBN.

One important note is that the accessibility summary for ONIX does not have the same guidelines as the summary for EPUB. So, while mapping to ONIX based on the Ace report generally works well, it is not necessarily advisable to copy that for the ONIX summary.

The Westchester team has the expertise you can rely on to make sense of the updated standards and guide you through changes you may need to make to your content to ensure it remains accessible and discoverable for your readers. Contact us to learn how we can help your publication program.