Book files Backlist / Remediation
This type of work concerns making accessibility improvements to books that have already been published. It will involve making changes to your existing book files, which might require getting in touch with authors.
Most legislation specifies a date, before which documents are exempt from meeting minimum accessibility requirements. You could plan to work from this date forwards (if your press has existed for that long), and once that has been achieved make those before that date accessible too. The dates specified are as follows:
- UK: documents published before 23 September 2018
- EU: 'office' files published before 23 September 2018
- US: there is no specification for documents, but it does contain a 'Legacy ICT' exemption date of 18 January 2018, which also states this needed to be compliant at the time
You could also use usage and citation metrics to determine which titles to start with (i.e. the most accessed ones first), if your back catalogue is big enough, otherwise it might be enough to consider all of them together.
You might decide to outsource this work to external remediation providers. It's important to be able to have detailed technical discussions with these professionals about your requirements, to be able to ask for evidence these requirements have been completed, and to be able to check the quality of work they have completed for you.
Taken from our checklist for manual checking of ebook files, here we have ordered tasks by level of complexity, which might help you be able to complete this work, or outsource it effectively. You can see a full spreadsheet of this checklist, with details of the complexity level, suggested approaches to checking and improving, whether this can be machine automated and whether a publisher, author or both needs to be involved, here: (to follow)
Easy wins
Text is actual text; not images of text
Colours of text has contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1
Text is reflowable without problems
Text can be resized without problems
Line height and spacing, letter spacing and word spacing can all be changed without problems
Orientation can be changed without problems
Other clickable elements are 24 x 24 pixels
Other clickable elements have visible text that matches the text in the underlying code
A list's numbers, letters or bullets are displayed and tagged correctly
Non-decorative/real and decorative/artefact content is all tagged correctly
Non-text features (figures, graphics, captions, links, mathematical expressions) are tagged and grouped correctly
Lists, tables and TOCs are tagged correctly
Headers, footers, notes and references are tagged correctly
Headings are tagged as headings
Headings have just 1 <H1>, at the beginning
Headings <H2>-<H6> don't skip levels
No headings <H7> or higher
Other non-PDF structure elements tagged correctly
Multiple ways to navigate
Navigation consistent throughout
Repeating blocks of content can be skipped
Medium
Headings are descriptive of the content they contain
Fonts are coded correctly
Colours of non-text features (figures, graphics) has contrast ratio of at least 3:1
Links are accessible and meaningful
A tables's headers, rows and columns are tagged correctly
Static page breaks are present
Static page breaks are navigable
Reading/focus order retains meaning when using tabs or a screenreader
File has metadata
File metadata has a title that is used instead of file name
File metadata has a valid language
Source of static page breaks/pagination is identifiable
File metadata includes full accessibility conformance information
Complicated
Non-text features (figures, graphics, captions, links, mathematical expressions) have meaningful ALT text
Non-text features (figures, graphics, captions, links, mathematical expressions) have multiple ways of conveying meaning
PDF tags support the separate reading order
PDF role mapping is correct
Other structure elements in PDF tagged correctly
Variable
Where the language changes, individual parts have a valid language