I have a bit of a passion for accessibility and a passion for learning how to make my own digital creations more accessible. So, naturally, when the topic of eBooks was brought up, I immediately wanted to learn about how to make them more accessible. However, I was also aware that this was a broad topic, so I wanted to narrow down my scope. And what better topic for me, a beginner when it comes to eBooks, to cover than how to create an accessible source document for your eBook? So let’s get started.
In his lengthy 2016 work Accessible eBook Guidelines for Self-Publishing Authors, Dave Gunn writes that due to the automated process of converting an electronic document to another format, “your publication will only be as accessible as you choose to make it through the construction of an accessible source manuscript.” In other words, similar to how a site’s accessibility is determined by how accessible its coding is, an eBook’s accessibility is determined by how accessible the source document is. He offers several different tips to ensure the creation of an accessible source document, but this post will focus on three that echo accessibility tips I’ve heard within the context of web design.
1. Use Styled Level Headings Consistently
Gunn says that instead of using character formatting to format text, you should format text Styled Level Headings and apply them consistently. Using Styled Level Headings ensures that a table of contents will be generated and lets readers find their way to that chapter where they’ll know where they are within the text. Gunn also tells states that we should always apply styles consistently. In the context of an eBook, this would be something like always using Heading Level 1 for chapter titles. To bring this back to web design, this is essentially the eBook equivalent of using <h1> consistently for post titles on a blog. In addition, Gunn advises applying heading levels in numerical order. So, you might use Heading 1 for chapter titles, Heading 2 for subsections, and Heading 3 for a subsection within that subsection. Again, this echoes common web design advice. You’d use <h1> for a post title, <h2> for a subheading, and <h3> for a heading under the subheading.
2. Use Character Formatting Sparingly
For people with dyslexia or low vision, large portions of text that are bold or in italics can be difficult to read. Furthermore, if someone is reading an eBook with braille or audio, character formatting information such as weight, color, and italics usually aren’t conveyed. For this reason, character formatting shouldn’t be the sole thing you use to convey information. In web design, there’s similar advice about not using italic or bold text for large portions of text, and anyone with any passing knowledge of accessibility knows that conveying information solely through something like color or weight is a bad idea.
3. Use Alt Text
Similar to how alt text works on the web, braille and audio reading devices can provide a description of an image for readers. David Gunn advises only using one field for alt text and to make sure the alt text hasn’t been placed under the image and that it hasn’t been removed multiple times during the conversion process. Alt text in eBooks and alt text on the web have many of the same rules, such as not using alt text to describe purely decorative images. As another example, the exact nature of the alt text will depend on the context it appears in and how it fits into the text surrounding it. For example, the alt text of a chart might simply be the point the chart is trying to convey such as “English speakers make up 25.9% of total Internet users.”
As you can see, these three tips could easily be applied to web design or creating an eBook source document. Looking at these tips and the rest of the document made the idea of compiling an eBook less intimidating for me and hopefully for you as well.
Note: This chapter is a revised version of a blog post titled “3 Tips for Making An Accessible Source Document for Your eBook” on Digital Media Miscellany.
