e-Books and Accessibility – a briefing for education libraries

Introduction

Many educational instutions are exploring e-books as effective resource solutions offering wide availability at any time and from any place. There is also a perception that e-books offer many accessibility and inclusion benefits because the digital format potentially lends itself to manipulation of text style, colour and size as well allowing interaction with third party assistive technologies ranging from screen readers to text to speech and keyboard navigation.

e-Books do offer substantial potential for a wide range of users but this field is currently immature and there can be unexpected surprises – for example tutors and librarians may find that whilst the files are accessible the e-books may not be.

What access issues might arise?

The two key problems incude:

• Fulfilling your legal duty - your institution knows you have the key texts available in digital format in your e-library so does not alternative provision for disabled users. The users try to access the resources at the critical part of their course but find the interface does not support them. Users are let down and the institution is liable under the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA). As an example blind advocacy groups have filed a lawsuit against Arizona State University (ASU) to prevent the university from deploying Amazon’s Kindle DX electronic reading device as a means of distributing electronic textbooks to its students because the device cannot be used by blind students.
  

• Getting publisher support - few publishers are aware of the access limitations in the leading e-reader and e-library solutions. For example a publisher whose work flow was adapted to create ePub format for delivery through Adobe Digital Editions was very reluctant to provide a UK University with PDF versions of textbooks for a blind user. The publisher argued they had already supplied text in a recognised accessible format (and indeed ePub is accessible). 
  

How can an accessible format be inaccessible to some users?

Although e-books in PDF or ePub format offer many benefits, the ability to access those benefits depends largely on the mechanism used to deliver the e-books to users. If an accessible version of a book is delivered through a library portal or e-reader system which lacks accessibility, the accessibility benefits of the e-book are severely compromised.


Figure 1 – A good e-book reader allows the user to directly or indirectly get to the accessibility potential of the underlying digital text – accessing it by keyboard, voice control, screenreader etc and adjusting the output in terms of font size, style, colour and medium – eg refreshable Braille, text-to-speech etc. A poor e-book reader will have minimal access inbuilt and/or will not interoperate with access technologies.

Readers have a wide range of requirements according to their age, abilities and disabilities. A good e-book reader will either directly accommodate these needs or will work with other tools to ensure the needs are met (see Figure 1 above). The access requirements of any software that delivers e-books include:

• text magnification (with reflow) suited to a wide range of user needs,
• logical keyboard access to all functionality (ie good tab order and skip-to options),
• selectable text perceivable to text to speech and screen reader software.
• colour, contrast and (where possible) font manipulation.

The current state of e-book accessibility- main providers

Currently, one of the leading industry solutions used by many publishers has inadequate accessibility to enable UK education institutions to meet all their DDA requirements around procuring and providing accessible products and services without providing an alternative access method.

Adobe® Content Server is used to apply digital rights management (DRM) protection to e-books, and currently the only desktop computer-based e-book reading software capable of decoding this protection is Adobe® Digital Editions. Adobe Digital Editions is therefore used by many e-book suppliers. The accessibility weaknesses in the current 2009 product include the following (with relevant disability impacts in brackets):

• no colour/contrast  changing options (dyslexia and visual impairment)
• no support for screenreaders  (visual impairment/blind)
• no text to speech options (dyslexia, visual impairment and learning difficulties)
• limited magnification range (visual impairment and dyslexia).
• no keyboard access to body text (motor impairment). Selecting text and using CTRL+C someone with mouse control can paste text into text to speech software but anyone relying on a keyboard is denied this assistance.
  

Other providers

Some e-book aggregators and publishers use their own bespoke systems instead of Adobe Digital Editions. Those tested so far have come out with significant access barriers. These vary from platform to platform but colour/contrast changing, adequate magnification and reliable text to speech or assistive technology access are the key areas to look for.

Solutions

Industry responses

Adobe is aware of issues for users with disabilities related to Adobe Content Server protection and access to e-books displayed within Adobe Digital Editions. Adobe is using a two-pronged approach to address these challenges:

Immediate: Enabling non-Adobe players
Adobe is pursuing licensing deals with a variety of e-book players, including ones with robust support for accessibility, to enable players with proven accessibility support to use Adobe’s Reader Mobile software development kit (SDK) to gain access to protected e-book content.  It is impossible to provide a concrete timeline for the release of software with this support since it is dependent on the development cycles of other companies.

Long-term: Enabling Digital Editions accessibility for assistive technologies 
Adobe intends to provide support for accessibility in the next major release of Digital Editions. This is targeted for the next calendar year.

Educational institution responses

In the short term it is advisable that before procuring or licensing ANY e-book collection you:

1. obtain written information from the supplier regarding the accessibility issues described above;
2. investigate the possibility of delivery of electronic texts without DRM protection where required for disabled users. This would only need to be a short term arrangement  until either Adobe Digital Editions addresses accessibility requirements or other e-book tools with accessibility support are compatible with Adobe Content Server DRM (see note below).  
3. consider alternative systems and products where there is evidence they can provide better accessibility and enable you to meet your obligations under the DDA.
4. ensure disabled users have an early induction into your e-book system to help them be aware of potential benefits and barriers.

Conclusions and recommendations

e-Books offer the promise of unprecedented library access for people with wide ranging disabilities. The industry is at a relatively immature stage of development. The JISC TechDis service and our associated partners (see below) would encourage you to:

• advertise to disabled users the benefits of current e-book systems
• test your systems with disabled users in order to:
• anticipate potential workarounds (including third party software) or
• get alternative formats from publishers in a timely manner
• regularly raise accessibility issues with providers to ensure these concerns are embedded in the industry from the beginning.