Benetech

by Tyler M. Carey, Chief Revenue Officer

Reader note: As of March 2024, the European Accessibility Act is slated to become effective in June, 2025. While there is speculation about a 2030 loophole for backlist content, we strongly recommend you confer with legal counsel for professional guidance.

If you’re trying to figure out what your company needs to do with just over a year from the European Accessibility Act’s (EAA) June 2025 deadline, this blog post is for you.

In March of 2019, the European Accessibility Act was passed, to make arrangements for better support for people of all capabilities and needs across countless products and industries. For publishers, this meant that at a certain point in time any books they had available for sale in Europe would be required to have an accessible alternative version available for anybody with print disabilities, visual challenges, neurodiversity issues, or countless other reasons where they would benefit from consuming a book via an e-reader or adaptive technology.

There were thought leaders who were on the accessibility train long before the EAA, who helped provide guidance to many of us and shared best practices. Publishers like the University of Michigan Press and Macmillan Learning have been providing guidance to their peers on this subject for many years, in conjunction with innovators like Laura Brady and Bill Kasdorf, and organizations like Benetech and DAISY. Westchester realized the import of the EAA on the files we deliver to digital platforms and provide to our clients, so we went through the rigorous process to become Benetech GCA-certified and joined DAISY to bring better resources to the table for our staff and clients.

Many of our clients were also similarly embracing accessibility for these reasons, even if they have not had accessibility baked into their workflow before. But for many publishers – crushed by the surging prices for paper, printing, and shipping during the pandemic – the timing to invest in a new aspect of their workflow was ill-timed. Many well-intended publishers have – for pragmatic reasons – been hitting “snooze” on the monthly calendar reminders they may have that say “Prepare for the European Accessibility Act”.

So, now the alarm has gone off, you’re doing the math and realize waiting is no longer a plausible strategy. What should you do?

1. Consult Counsel. If you have an attorney on retainer, ask them for their input on how much of your list you have to get converted into accessible, reflowable ePub3 files by July 2025, and if they feel you have wiggle room to delay conversion on any backlist titles
2. Audit Your Capabilities. Anything front list should be being created as an accessible, reflowable ePub3 file as a rule for moving forward. The rules are a bit more gray on books that are fixed layout (e.g. graphic novels, heavily designed titles), but WCAG, BISG, and other organizations are trying to help set policies for accessible fixed layout titles. If you don’t have possess the in-house chops to create accessible ePubs, find a GCA-certified vendor that Benetech has flagged as being able to provide accessible-compliant files. And yes, – shameless plug alert – US employee-owned Westchester Publishing Services is a leading, GCA-certified vendor with affordable rates for front and backlist conversion. (Contact Us to learn more – but first, finish reading this for more tips.)
3. Audit Your List. Like tackling any gigantic pile of anything, triage. For your titles in print, which are new and likely to still be selling well in 2025? Which titles in your backlist are perennial sellers, or tied to an upcoming event or release? (e.g. some books about J. Robert Oppenheimer spiked in sales after the release of Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster movie Oppenheimer, last year and will likely see increased activity with the movie winning seven Academy Awards. Your sales lead should be able to help you forecast these things.) Start with remediating the available ePub files for those titles or convert any for which you don’t have ePub files. Any with art are going to need Alt Text (read on)
4. Audit Your Workflow and identify the Gotchas. While the ACE Checker by DAISY will review your files for anything structural or in the metadata (all key), there are a handful of less easier-to-track areas where ePub files will fail being acceptable as ‘accessible’:

a. If they are not ePub3. ePub2 files will often need to be upgraded or remediated if they do not meet the ePub Accessibility 1.1 spec.
b. If they have art that is missing alt text. Alt text acts as a descriptor for an image that adaptive technology can read aloud for someone to help them understand to help someone better understand what is depicted in the image. There are recommendations about how long the entries have to be, and what they will need to contain. This is a task that can often be taken on by an editorial assistant, copyeditor, or even the author. Vendors like Westchester can write alt text entries as a service, too, of course – and for backlist projects that can often be the most efficient way to pick away at the pile. But look at these resources to give thought to how you can adjust your own author or editorial guidelines moving forward to make this another task or asset for a publication. Top tip: when providing alt text to a vendor, it’s often fairly easy to simply add it to the art log.
c. If they have passages in other languages. If a book has frequent passages in other languages, an editor needs to tag these so that the compositor/converter can flag this in the ePub metadata.
d. If they have charts with red and green elements. Many accessibility requirements tie into common sense changes many of us made in our workflows many years ago. It’s been considered a bad practice for many years to use red and green in tables and charts. Well, now it will prevent an ePub from being sellable as an accessible ePub. If you have books in your backlist where this may be an issue, those tables will need to be re-set for your ePub.

5. Start following thought leaders. Laura Brady posts articles on her site, which is an amazing resource for learning about accessibility, news, and policy. Bill Kasdorf’s site, Publishing Technology Partners, contains perspective and ideas to consider to make accessibility manageable and part of your workflow. DAISY has these resources – and you should consider joining. Benetech not only manages the certification process for publishers and vendors, but they themselves are experts and resources in their own right. These other resources, including a white paper about a webinar hosted by Westchester, featuring Bill Kasdorf’s advice on navigating the EAA, are also helpful.

Like anything else in life, accessibility is a journey not a destination. Contact Us to discuss your accessibility journey and the challenges you’re encountering. Between our editorial, production, and digital resources, Westchester has many ways we can to help you audit your workflow, your titles, and help you draw up a plan. Talk with us about how we can help.