 So, I guess we'll get underway. So past summits for a lot of you have been to pass some at some of you haven't but these conversations have been really easy to spark because we've literally all been at the same table. So this is a little bit trickier but to spark the conversation about what publishers need and the conversation around certification. We have some panelists here. So, in case you didn't know my name is Laura Brady I work for the House of the Nancy press as the director of cross media. And I'm a well known accessibility busy body apparently. Can the other panelists please introduce themselves and explain how they come at the question of accessibility. Do you want to go first. Good afternoon everyone my name is Deborah Nelson. I'm CEO of ebound ebound is what we fondly refer to ourselves as our digital sales and marketing department for the Canadian independent publishers our focus this year is to support accessibility both through conversion projects and through a benetech certification pilot. Chantel. Hi everyone I'm Chantel right from Atlantic Publishers Marketing Association and the manager of programming and member services here, and have been leading the two collective projects that we have under the Canada Book Fund collective projects for support for organizations we've wrapped up this project with Nels and we're working on a pilot project right now with an accessible ebooks collection with our libraries in Nova Scotia and new friends. Jillian. Do you want to go next. I do. I'm Jillian Bell, I work with sask books were the provincial book publishing association in Saskatchewan. And we have the majority of publishers in Saskatchewan. We have six staff each of whom might do five jobs. Most of our publishers have one staff or no staff, and most of our publishers don't qualify for federal supports. So what we're doing at sask books is trying to really create an environment where it's easy for publishers to develop a born accessible workflow, and we're looking at ways to support that so that we can get more Canadian content, more accessible Canadian content available across the country. My kid is texting me I got distracted, apologies. Matt, do you want to go next. Good morning everyone and good afternoon my name is Matt Chan I am the cross media assistant at have some of the names is slash grant with books, working with Laura. My perspective on this is mainly that of a production staff member. I work on a day to day basis to make sure that these born accessible concepts that we are discussing are a part of the content that we make at a Nancy. Thank you. And finally Karen. I think you're muted Karen. Well that I lost my mouse I've got two screens going on here. Speaking of tech savvy. So I'm Karen the blog executive director the book publishers Association and Alberta. I've been involved in accessible publishing for quite a number of years starting back in 2016 when we did our first. E audio book accessible E audio book project in partnership with the CNIB, and we're about to enter into our fifth iteration of that. We also have an ebook collection available through the public libraries and Alberta, which is also shared with Nels. So Nels has had access to our content for conversion purposes since 2017. And we're currently in the process of a conversion project with through the digital accessible publishing fund have been working with Sarah on two phases of the project. And we're well into phase two right now. So it's something that I've been very interested in and familiar with and care about. So, Okay, so let's just dive right in. The needs of publishers are complex evolving in numerous and they're also very depending on the size of the publisher and the resources at their disposal as we all well know. So what do publishers need in order to build accessible books, and anybody can jump in here. Do we need training. Do we need better support. Better technical knowledge, but like where where should we be focusing our time and attention. Go ahead, Deb. Great, sorry, sorry for the interruption. I think we both no worries for inspired to talk at the same time, just from a really high level. I think that publishers need to. And this is like before even the commitment is developed. Understand why it's so important to do this like why are we what's the moral compulsion behind this work and why is it so important. And I think going through like the tester demos like we did yesterday was so incredibly impactful. Debunk the myths that this is, you know, as big as creating ebooks, like 10 years ago, I think that myth needs to be debunked as well by talking to others that have gone through that process. I think it's not as complex as people may believe. I think you need experts around you to support you, many of which we've heard from today, and there's so many wonderful, you know, services and supports and expertise around that. You know, I think we're set up for success in this work. Matt, do you want to jump in. I want to say I think this is a good, like, almost a softball question to start off the conversation because to me and I don't know maybe I'm just under thinking it, but it's not that complicated there needs to be the philosophical aspect almost like to what Deb was just saying, the Y of it and the motivations behind it, and then also the how these, you know, what are the tools involved, and how do we actually implement what we need to implement. I think from the perspective of really small publishers and micro publishers there's there's a piece here that really plays off of what Deb was talking about. When we look at Canadian publishing there's a lot of publishing that's going on that isn't necessarily being done by mid sized houses. And I think if that philosophical piece about why producing accessible content and accessible metadata is made available for people who want to self publish or hybrid publish or produce websites and blogs that kind of information and that why piece is going to be integral because in order to get born accessibility as part of just an automatic go to workflow across the publishing spectrum. So I think we need to address that piece first. And, and so I think that's that's actually a really, really important answer that addressing the why it's important is really integral. I will jump in to agree with with everything everybody said, I actually spoke to a couple publishers before the panel and and one of the things, one of them said to me was, it's, it's definitely not about making money, it's about doing it because it's something to do. And so there's that intrinsic value around making books accessible to everyone, so that the work that publishers does is out there for everyone. And I would add to that. The question of time actually came up as the biggest challenge for a couple of my publishers, especially in the area of creating the alt text for some publishers who have complicated alt text it's very very time consuming. One example one publisher gave me was there's a book with 200 images and every single image has to have all text created, and their publishing house is three people and so it's just the real the reality of just human resources. That's a really, that's a really great point to bring up here we. I passed one of my colleagues with writing alt text for an 80 page graphic novel this morning and she wasn't very amused. It's a, it's a big thing and at Groundwood, they're really paying attention to making sure that the language that they use in the alt text reflects the language in the book that they're not using terms that are out of sync with the tone and the content to the sort of speaking at reading level which can make it even meet even more complex. That does feel like an area where publishers will 100% need some support without question. Well and one of one of the ways that this one publisher is tackling it is there, they're doing an experiment to see if the author can actually create the alt text. It's a process of writing the book and going through the editorial process, and they've had a lot of pushback from the author because it feels like a really onerous piece that isn't. It doesn't feel like it's part of writing the book for the author so it'll be interesting to see how that kind of develops. It really feels to me like if you're thinking about accessibility and folding it into every part of the publishing supply chain, then you can write in the task of having to write the alt text into the publisher's contract. Just like, you know, it's a publisher that we work for we never pay for indexing if the author wants an index that's their responsibility and that's written into the contract. This can be something that can be can be thought about at that level as well. Chantel I think you had your hand raised a second ago do you want to weigh in. I'm just going to add just similar to Karen we have some responses from our publishers a bit ahead of this and and we also did a survey with with Nelson ebound recently to the Atlantic publishers that addressed a similar question to this and it was interesting one need that was listed across almost across the board for everyone who answered our survey was better access to technology. What became clear as nails continued to work with our publishers throughout the project was what they really meant or what they didn't know that they meant was more of an understanding about what free technology is available. Maybe edit sigil you can pressure like just not when you're a new publisher and you're and you're just waiting into this world not. I guess it's it's very overwhelming and and assuming maybe that there is a lot of costly technology and and having a regional or national publishing association to help narrow down some of the resources that are available and making those helping publishers make those connections can be really valuable. Great. That's a great thing. Charles I think you had your hand up next. Sure. Totally agree with you Laura on that writing into the contracts for the authors because the author knows why they're putting in an image into a book so they they have an idea behind it sometimes they even have. They don't even find the image they give some instructions to someone else to find that image well those instructions has some information on it that could be used for the all text description so I think that. And we're seeing that a lot of conversion vendors for a bigger publishers that are using those services. They actually start writing they're starting to write the alt text or there's other consulting agencies out there that are starting to pop up like text box. Q Alexander company and others that are starting to write this so you know if you know, and they charge per image and depending on the complexity so simple images might be a couple box whereas a complex image might be like up to $1215. So there's an extended description that also needs. So these are some other ideas and maybe I don't know if the that heritage money could be potentially used for helping publishers with that extended costs, I don't know, but I'm just throwing it out there that that that's what we're starting to see anyway. Matt Chan, see you had your hand up next I think. I wanted to say that like in the context of a smaller like micro publisher that wants to make themselves born accessible. Maybe don't start with your 80 page graphic novel as like the test case or like the hundred page book where there's a picture on every page. You know if that smaller micro publishers domain is like the lifestyle book where that is going to be the norm then yes obviously this is something that you have to grapple with, but to echo something that Laura mentioned in the session this morning is it's baby steps you know like just start just start, you know, do what you can and then like work up to the 80 page graphic novel. That's a really good point. Sarah, Sarah Hilderly. I think you're muted Sarah. Sorry everybody can you hear me now. Yeah. I just wanted to follow on from Laura and Charles's point about the author preparing alt text. I think in some cases, particularly where you're trying to echo the language and the style of language within the text. It's a wonderful idea, but we mustn't forget that alt text and the, the preparation of alt text is is a skill. It's not, it's not something that says it's not as easy as writing a caption for instance for a for a picture, and people are being trained to to share meaningful alt text written within the context of the situation that the image is placed. And so I think for some for more technical projects, medical books, books on art, it, it's really using the skills of the experts. So what I'm trying to say is alt text is really dependent on the genre and the, and the type of image that you are describing. That's really, really good point. It is a skill at an anti we've actually hired this organization called Nelson if you heard of them. They're going to do image description training for us next week. Everyone in editorial is required to attend, which just feels like real progress for Jillian do you have, do you want to weigh in. Yeah, it's just like my colleagues in in Alberta and in the Maritimes at our publishers replied also to the question what do you need. And, and of our publishers who replied, one of our premier book designers in the province really needs hands on workshops, hands on training. They're not comfortable working with code. They're not comfortable working with tags they they run screaming from having to do the metadata portion of their of their design work. And so I think that some of the tools that both Nelson's putting out and Daisy has available. I think those are going to become really important because it's not that it's a difficult process. It's that if you if you've come to book production from a certain place those relatively simple interventions that will create good books can be daunting and so I think that that training pieces is really important. And also because here in our wonderful province. We don't have a lot of people who are trained in book production yet so it's going to be helpful in the long run. I feel like that piece is really critical just hands on somebody literally holding your hand through the process and walking you through those first baby steps, for sure. But I think you're next you had your hand raised. Thanks, I've got a couple of questions but I'll just do one at a time and I can come back into the conversation with the second one. And that you said it's not that complicated, you know the publishers need to realize it's not that complicated. And when you say that I'm thinking of a couple things. I can circle back around but the way I see the complexity of it, you know I've been training publishers for two decades, let's say, on two primary technologies XML first, and more recently on metadata. The difference with those two technologies is my God it's so, you know it's a huge leap for them to get past just that initial stage, and that's far with accessibility, the publishers I'm speaking to, you know, yes I agree with you Matt. It isn't really, you know, all that complicated, but getting them past that first door way. I lose them as I do when I lose you know when I used to talk about XML when I do talk currently about metadata. When I first say to them, you know, accessibility let's talk about what your company could be doing around that. And there's just this kind of pull back. Other people are experiencing around that sort of first door of complexity when they start talking about accessibility. I meant to practice my comments by saying that it's easy for me to, you know, say the things that I've said, being immersed in doing this sort of thing. Like eight hours a day versus you have to like face down the small publisher and say like listen we really want you to do this I, I can't even imagine. The folks who are running the publishing associations you're encountering that first moment with many of your clients, how do you find that that first stage with them. It's huge for a lot of our publishers. Even a lot of our publishers are still and this even includes our, our primary publishers who sell, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of books every year. They're not, they're not comfortable with XML they're not comfortable with, and most of them will farm that farm that work out to, you know, to do that product production elsewhere. I think that there's that that first step is huge people are so intimidated when it comes to any kind of tech babble, that's how they see it. And just having to hold their hands and say look this this really isn't that intimidating let's just walk through it step by step and it'll be easy. They don't believe you might as well be speaking Klingon. But it is helpful to both give them to give publishers the kind of resources for why I mean we circle right back to that initial thing that we started this conversation with. There is a business case for to be made for publishing excessively. And the business case is even clearer when you take into account DCH funding like that is huge and it really is putting the money putting other money where their mouth is that this is supported and this does make it easier. But there is a business case you will sell more books that the clients will borrow those books from the libraries, you know, you will get more views and if you can make the business case it may make it a little bit easier. On top of it is really the right thing to do. Thank you Erin I think you had your hand up do you want to come in. Yeah, I just wanted to share when we were in phase one of the digital accessible project. One of the things we needed to do to get an estimate for the conversion work was to figure out what kind of complexity the alt text was. And so we asked publishers to evaluate their titles and say whether it was simple medium or complex. And I realized very quickly they didn't know how to do that, because they didn't know what simple medium or complex alt text was. And so we had a webinar with Nels in the summertime to do exactly that training that you're talking about Laura. And as soon as that, as soon as they had that experience it's like it became clearer and less intimidating. And at the beginning they didn't know where to even start with that. I need to unmute myself there I couldn't find the button and when people stop talking the screen moves and then I don't know what to do. Charles I think you are next. So, on this thing for micro publishers that are like don't know how to do XML and things. I think knowing that there's this new thing from Daisy word to is going to be huge because I'll give you a story. In December, I created my first e pub. And I've been looking at the pubs for the last four or five years now, but this is the first time actually created one from scratch using their tool. And I was able to have a really complex book created. Now I had to go in and manually edit some things afterwards, especially after it failed my own certification. So that was kind of funny. I was using those tools to tell me oh yeah by the way you did this wrong or you did that wrong and it's like, oh my goodness was, you know, it's an eye opener for me and so I'm like, walking the walk, but I was able to create an e pub though which I've never done before so I think. And these these books are, you know, nine times out of 10 will be perfect coming out of the gate from a word to e pub conversion. So if you put the images in with the all text descriptions in Microsoft Word, that will get pulled over into an e pub. And then you can add in some other things like the accessibility metadata and the like, but I even some of that is starting to be built into that tool as well. So I think what's going to happen is we're going to start to see some training sessions on how to use word to e pub and, and these publishers or self publishers can start creating amazing books just by using that free tool by Daisy so yeah. It does raise the question though a forking production, because word is usually where the manuscript ends and the book, the, the formation of the book starts. So if you stop editing at word and then go into in design and to e pub. If you make any editorial changes to the page layout, then you're going to have to make them twice, which makes it a little bit more complex, especially for micro publishers. I don't know who's next there's four hands raised, and I lost track of who goes next. I think that was next actually. Matt doesn't have his hand raised. Don't confuse me man. Do you want to go next. Sure, I just add another response to sad question there from from our experience so with the project that we had just finished with nails and ebound that was funded by the Canada Book Fund collected projects we we also surveyed our members about the complexity of their books and also both their work we moved from that into file reviews and one on one opportunities to work one on one with nails, and then coming from nails built some custom PD coming out of that so our publishers had indicated that they felt the, the general videos, and thinking about it in more abstract terms was difficult for them just starting especially with so many of them being quite small and having really niche publishing programs. What we were able to do was to offer some, some training that is on the topics that come up over and over of course like image descriptions, but really tailored to the publishers who are part of APMA. So they felt a lot more comfortable having it personalized that way. I just just have one publisher who had never created an ebook before, who was able to work with nails through the program to create their first ebook and of course their first accessible ebook. So I think that. Yeah, that kind of baby steps and that personalization can really helpful to get things started. That's wonderful. I love to hear that that's really great. I love that and then they're producing. They don't know how to not make an accessible ebook so that's. That's crazy like a fox there. I believe you're next. Do we stop in a few minutes because this is a long question I can withdraw it for. Well, the thing is that this conversation goes on actually to the end of today's session we can stop and have breaks but we can keep talking about publisher needs and certification right up until four o'clock my time, or whatever time zone you're in. The rest of today is unstructured in that we're trying to just solve problems so we can keep going it doesn't matter if your question is kind of long. Okay, so this is this is a very tentative question. Quite a bit of the talk we have around accessibility. You know and as it was just said you know it's not about doing money is about doing it because it's the right thing to do. And, you know, I certainly embrace that, but run into then the second part of the problem is once I get them past complexity, or once I engage them in the conversation with complexity then it's like well why would I want to do this was the right thing to do. Yeah, and well, I got many other right things I got to do or many other things that I simply need to do from a business perspective. And then, you know, Laura you make the point that in candidate this point where you can get funded to do that. But again they don't come out ahead with that they cover their costs they haven't sold more books. So then the question to the group and this is all very tentative in my head is that if you've created a born accessible EPUB three, can that not be substituted in all the commercial channels for the current EPUB that you're using through Kobo Amazon, well leave out Amazon percent, you know let's say Kobo Apple, the folks who are taking EPUB directly. Can you substitute that one, hence opening up the market that folks who are print disabled, don't have to wait for books to go through the home, you know Nels chain and not be available to them for another eight months or whatever it is, but could actually buy that book on day one, thereby creating a new revenue source potential revenue source for publishers. Does that make any sense at all. Well I can, I can, I can tell you what we do at a Nancy, we only make one version of any product and it's accessible EPUB three, and that goes to the entire supply chain. And that accessible EPUB three fulfills a lot of print disabled readers needs, not all of them and then that's where Nels comes in to make a daisy talking book or to make an embossed Braille edition that that those kinds of tasks sit with specialists like Nels and Sheila in this country. Does does that answer your question to other people want to weigh in. I wonder just a quick follow up would be, you know, that's the one you offer. Do the people who, I mean, that means everyone who bought the old EPUB three pre accessibility. They won't even notice the difference in terms of what they're buying it all looks the same to them. But is it a metadata problem that we don't expose to the print disabled community that if this EPUB three works for you, you know you can buy it on day one the same day everybody else bought the new, you know, hottest new novel. So is there then you know that incremental revenue opportunities should those people become aware of the availability of said book. Right. So, the one piece here is that, you know, a well made EPUB that's fully accessible is a better reading experience for every single consumer. It's an important point to make here a really well made ebook is better for everyone throughout the support through every kind of reader that comes to the book. So it's got better navigation it's a more seamless you can increase the font size or change the font more seamlessly. So those kinds of ebooks are better for everybody. And now I forgot what your question was, I wanted to say that and then and that it's the discoverability problem. Yes. Do you want to come in. Yeah, Kate. Sure, I think that made the point already that I was going, going to is that I think you're right. And in opening that commercial channel for print disabled readers. And this was touched on in the panel that started today, being able to expose that metadata, and to make sure that those platforms are accessible as well. That's, I think a barrier at the moment to that piece. That work is underway and ongoing. I understand that COBOL will be exposing metadata fairly soon, like some point this year. So that will be a really big deal, especially in Canada. Jillian, I think that you're next on the hand raising chain. Sorry, I confused you before. I was confused between Matt and tab. Okay. The one thing that I wanted to say is that when we talk about barriers. When it comes to two publishers and what they need. I can't state enough how important it is to know that the Department of Canadian Heritage does not support all publishers in Canada. It's a very small number of publishers, a very small number of brilliant and wonderful publishers. But the bigger challenge becomes how to make sure that if you have a new publisher, who is an indigenous publishing house who's just starting up, for example, and they don't, they will not be able to get DCH support. So that's why it's so important to talk about how making accessible books from the get go is really important and how to build that sustainability into your publishing model, whether you're just starting up, whether you're a micro publisher, whether you're a self publisher, because while it's good that the, that the federal government has, like you said, put their money where their mouth is when we need this in the publishing market, it's not accessible to all publishers. And so that that piece of the how to piece becomes even more important, and the supports and and programs and solutions that are out there from people like the Daisy consortium then become that much more important because those are accessible. I muted myself. Oops. Charles, I think you're next. So I just wanted to mention that we don't have to get accessibility perfect and the accessibility 1.0 specifications that that we're using for certification, etc. It basically has the bar set kind of low for publishers, specifically around the image descriptions, the alt text descriptions. WCAG even single a requires, you know, that images that are complex have extended description, but we've actually put in like an amendment to to the specification that says, you know what, we just want publishers to put in something just a summary of that image in the alt text description. And then, if an image required complex description just note that if you can't do it. Note that in the accessibility summary that there's, you know, basic alt text descriptions, but the complex images are not don't have that that affordance that doesn't have that extended description. So, and then those books can still pass, you know, at least saying that it's, you know, that it's that it could be certified. Now with our certification program where we want publishers to get to that double a requirement and have that extended description, but you could definitely put in that you are at least meeting the minimum bar for accessibility with that simple alt text Sarah Mays, do you want to weigh in. Yeah, I guess I just wanted to talk a little bit about to address Jillian and the question about Canada Book Fund and what we fund and what we don't fund. I think, and I'm biased, but I think that that's where collective initiatives can really play a key role and working with a lot of you guys and the publishing associations because I think that, you know, once we start training that can be delivered by regional and national associations that may cover publishers that we're not able to reach, because they're not large enough for support for publishers. I think that that's a really key piece and it's certainly one that we recognize within the department. And we thank you very much we're doing some accessibility programming that's does that this design specifically for that so it's awesome. So one of the great things about all the people assembled in this room here is that it really is publishers and support organizations from coast to coast. And that's a real strength of this conversation. And the publisher support organizations I think are key, especially for the small publishers. As I said a little while ago in the main room. So some of you want to talk about the programs that are ongoing for small publishers and the kinds of things that people can tap into and take advantage of and where exciting work is being done. Since I was being the stick in the mud I can start. It's asked books, one of the programs that we're undertaking with support from collective initiatives actually is a born accessible audio books and ebooks mentorship program, where we are matching up publishers with producers in hopefully in Saskatchewan, but also across the country to learn those best practices and to develop to develop those books. We're also introducing and born accessible audio book subsidy to allow those smaller publishers who aren't necessarily able to tap into some of the provincial and federal supports to be able to produce audio books and accessible audio books. We're also developing the developers and the producers in the province so we're offering workshops to audio book developers and to ebook producers and designers to get them up to snuff on certification standards. And to make sure that we have the capacity in Saskatchewan to do, and hopefully for Western Canada to because we dream big to be able to get those books out in the market. I feel like developing local talent who can do the actual work is critical to this being a success long term. So I'm really happy to hear that. Anybody else. Deb I was wondering if you want to talk about the publisher resource kit project that you have ongoing. Thank you Laura. So I touched on it quickly yesterday. And the intent of this publisher resource project is to sort of put our arms around really specific content that will help publishers where they are. And it kind of tweets me when Chantel was talking about how the Atlantic publishers felt much more engaged when the content was specific to them, respecting where their starting point is. As we know there's so many different workflows there's probably you know, we almost as many workflows as there are publishers I know that's overstating it a little bit. But if you can go into a place and find specifically your workflow that speaks specifically to what you have to do next. We find we feel, and based on the research through the landscape research report that that's going to accelerate our agenda. So, highly searchable highly specific quality tested content that will deliver the standards that we're, we're trying to get towards. Again, I wonder if you want to talk for a minute about certification and what that process was like from your point of view for Nancy. I'd love to an instant Grandwood is currently certified by the, like we're covered by the Venetec GC certification. And what that is is it's a workflow certification so we're not looking at going in and certifying individual books rather the process that we go through is front and loaded where we have three titles audited for accessibility best practice by accessibility experts at Venetec. After this auditing process. The point is to remediate those three titles of course, but more to put more importantly to remediate the process through which those three titles were created so the workflow as we were just talking about. And then after those three titles are kind of checked in audited that workflow that was used to produce those three books is covered by the certification for the process of a year after which point. You know, we'll have to go through recertification just to keep us up to date with all the advances that have happened over the past year. Charles, do you want to jump in here and talk a little bit more about the certification process. Sure. Thanks Laura. Yeah, it was great working with House of Nancy and yourselves on that and, you know, the process actually is, you know, we don't want all three books at first and evaluate all three books what we want to do is get one book at a time. And then we give our feedback we find out where the issues potentially are. And we actually give code examples back to, you know, to the publisher saying, this is what you did. And this is and then we highlight and, you know, tell you exactly what we would like to see changed on it. And we also have like that whole idea about a simple book versus a media, moderate book or a complex book. So we can evaluate, you know, tell you what level of book are you is this a simple trade book or, you know, complex stem book or someplace in between. And then once we've given that multiple reports there's one from ace there's one from smart. There's a very detailed technical report that I just explained that, you know, goes into each issue. And some of them are like must fix issues like a WCAG violation, or a accessibility 1.0 specification violation, whereas others are like in the gray area that are some strongly suggested things that we would like to see. And then some best practices that are minor that, you know, would be nice for you to to fix. So in our certification process and our reports that we give you, we give you a score, we tell you how you're doing. And if there's, you know, first and foremost, if there was any WCAG violations must fix. But then we give you a score overall, basically telling you, you know, are you at 80% you know, there, or are you closer to 90 or 100% and this is like a bar that you can then use. And you don't have to get 100% to pass certification. You just need to get above 80% and fix all of the must fixes or all of those WCAG violations. And we work with you. We like, if you don't understand what we reported, then we set up a call and we go over it and we dive into the book and get into the nitty gritty and we come up with a solution because there's not one solution that fits all either. Like, there's multiple ways to do something. And we could give you a recommendation if that doesn't work for you, we'll come up with a new recommendation. And the thing is, you can always ask us questions to so if there's something that you're putting into your book that you've never done before. Say a media, like a video or some sound, and you're like, how do I make this accessible? That's what we're here for. So then we will, and if I don't know the answer, if my team doesn't know the answer, then we start to go look out to the broader industry, you know, because we have friends in the W3C, we have Daisy, we have, you know, there's a lot of folks and sometimes I even go to Laura say, Hey, Laura, how do you do this, you know, I think you've done this before, you know, like drop caps, how do you make those accessible? Like, there's a lot of little things that a lot of small publishers would have no idea and they just like, Okay, I got to work. And then we're like, Yeah, except in this reading system, it like spells out the word now, instead of reading that full word because of the drop cap, the way that you implemented it. So then once that first book finally passes, then we're like, Okay, great, make sure that you're not fixing just that book because anyone can do that because we give you the code to do it. We want you to fix your pipeline like Matt mentioned, and then give us a new book off that production pipeline, hopefully something that we haven't seen before, maybe something that has a table that you didn't have in or math in it, and then we'll look at that and give you recommendations so that by the third time, we feel confident that you've met that bar and can pass certification and that you know what you're doing. And like Laura said, then, you know, once after a year, then we'll do a spot check. In addition to all that, we also give out quarterly bulletins to to the our GCM members that basically says this is what's going on in standard space. This is what's changing. Here's some new changes that we've seen because we're seeing all of these different publishers do things differently, and something that might not have been on our radar before it's like oh shoot, and we don't even have a thing in our in our checklist to to look at so we then add a new new check. And that will say that, you know, in a month's time we're going to start checking your books for that and anything new when we do your spot check be aware that we're also going to be looking for how you're doing drop caps for example if you're if you have that. So that's sort of the thing I'm happy I'm going to be here today tomorrow and, you know, happy to answer any questions on slack or my email. Yeah, it's just feel free to ask me any questions on this because it's super exciting we already have like six publishers now that have passed certification and Nancy being one of them here in Canada, and then six conversion vendors because we're actually working with the conversion vendors as well to get them to create accessible books for their publishers. So, we're trying to fight the fire on both ends, you know, so thanks. Thanks Charles. I think one of the real strengths of the benetech program is that it's iterative, and it can be an education in and of itself as you send ebooks back and forth. And I learned things in the process with benetech I thought I knew everything. I don't know everything things change and develop it's a vibrant space, it's dynamic and it's always moving. And the real strength is that there's, you can go back and forth with this series of ebooks and correct your mistakes, and then build those corrections into your workflow. I think you're next you had your hand raised. I think you need to unmute that you're muted. Yeah, thanks. Apologies for dominating questions and it's just such a great panel and a chance for me to learn a bunch of things. I was like, wow, that's great. And I also do some work with Canadian electronic library and they got certification as a benetech vendor, benetech certified vendor, and that was a big deal for Bob Gibson I know he put a lot of work into that, which got me interested in in publisher certification and as I looked at that I thought wow this is a great branding, real potential for branding as part of this discoverability of you know where you can get fully accessible books that you know are produced at a quality that that that the market is looking for. But then, obviously from what Charles is describing there's a degree of complexity in in in that whole process. Then, what I'm the real question is is what is the actual cost what's the cash outlay with the colliery being colliery being therefore what size and scope of publisher is this reasonable for that to be able to say, yes you should pursue this certification. Great question. I actually, Michael Johnson is really part of a benetech leading the development, the business side of things, but it's it based on the complexity of your books so if you're a small trade cut, you know, that's very simple books, and that's why we have that scale of simple, moderate or complex books. That also changes the amount, the cost structure as well. But for something like a simple book I think it's, I don't know, 1500 or 2000 for for certification. And then it drops for the yearly it's it's not the same price so. But I, you know, I don't know the exact numbers, but it's under, you know, for the most complex books, that's still under $10,000 for what some of the bigger publishers that are doing like stamp books that requires us to spend hours going through this. You know, for looking at these very technical books and looking over the image descriptions to make sure that they're valid and making sure that you're doing your complex tables and you're, you know, some of these more advanced things correctly, like math and etc. So that's why there's a scale, and we'd be happy to like go over that with you. You know, and Michael would be the person to to sort of walk you through all of that. But yeah, we try to, you know, not try to meet publishers where they are as well. So I know that we have made those those adjustments and we've, we piloted this like six, five, six years ago. And found out here in the US what where publishers were. We're happy, you know where they're comfortable with and per book certification didn't fly so they wanted to fix price. And so, you know, it doesn't matter. You know, we're hoping that three books is going to be enough that some publishers were up to like seven or eight books that we're looking at for them before they become certified but they're not paying that in, you know, that cost. Because we've, we've done it as a more of a, you know, a certification price, not per book price. But there's other publishers like, you know what, we would rather just pay per book. Okay, well we could work with you on that too if you'd rather it that way. So that we were pretty flexible. Thank you. We'll have to pause here and let dub tell us about the certification pilot that's happening at ebound, which is, this is exactly the right spot to hear about it. I think. Great. Thank you Laura for the segue I did post it in the chat I didn't want to interrupt our business model at this point is a little different than what has just been described. And because of the funding and because of the parameters put around this pilot, which is one assessing if the tool works for our publishers and to try to assess the cost of scaling this participating publishers will move towards certification at no cost to them, besides a commitment to people hours and human effort and a commitment to actually compete, come, complete the process. So we've got we've licensed the benetech certification program until the end of this calendar year, at which point will stop pause reflect and decide what our next steps are going to be. It's a major opportunity especially for teeny publishers. Matt Chan I think you have your hand raised. Excellent. Just on the note of the people hours having just very recently gone through that certification process ourselves. I want to reassure everyone who's listening that the hours are not like it is absolutely not an onerous process. There are resources out there, if you want to gear up for accessibility on your own there's the DC knowledge knowledge base which is great and free. And there are a number of best practices documents like the W3C EPUB accessibility specs techniques document, but quite often if you choose to go that kind of DIY route. The time that you're going to be investing is quite high versus if you want to go for something like Benetech GCA. The point that I want to underscore, which Charles made is that it is a guided process. The examples are not generic examples that you would find, for example, in a knowledge base or in a techniques document, but there are examples using your own books. So that can oftentimes be a great time saver. Thank you. So it feels like now would be a good time to circle. Oh, Brandon, go ahead. Sorry, I just noticed you. That was a fast reaction. I just put my hand up. I was wondering. So Antic Press where I work is a children's publisher. We've had all kinds of interesting conversations around accessibility. And I'm wondering if the certification is at a point where it makes clear recommendations on changes in workflow. Because our understanding is at a point, I would say where we can remediate, but we can't yet implement across the whole staff accessibility features and born accessible feels like to me for a picture book, for example, we are structuring images as they are finalized and writing all texts for them and thinking about some of the things that Laura and Matt have been talking about with continuity and voice and age level. All of these things are special considerations as far as other conversations I've had with the, with colleagues in the industry as far so just to share that that is where my thinking is at and it would be Charles if you want to give some more insight into the Benetech. Start or, you know, hearing about other experiences and workflows would be really welcome. Well, I know that we've actually worked with the taboo, this publisher doing some children's books over in Asia. And they were part of this WIPO project. And they had us evaluate their their children's books, which we found some issues with. The biggest thing is, put your book into a reading system like that you're expecting your readers to be to be used, and turn on the either the self voicing feature of that like read aloud, and see how it does let does it, you know, and hopefully would capture and start to speak some of the old text descriptions of your book. Otherwise, you'll hear nothing right, or that would mean that then you would have to use like an assistive technology to access that information. But these are recommendations that we're now going to these, these reading systems and saying, by the way, you're not saying the old text descriptions of your images or you should have an option to turn that on with the read aloud feature, which we're starting to see like thorium has, etc. So, you know, and I know that the W3C, we're starting to look at fixed layout. And some of the accessibility challenges and I know Laura has a lot of knowledge in this space so I would defer to Laura actually on some of that myself actually. I spoke at a conference in November on accessibility issues and this publisher from Minnesota called capstone came to me asking me questions about the best way to do alt text for fixed layout books. And then I consulted with Wendy read and other people in the publishing working group to because they presented a number of different ways to do it and you know it was it was a good question and there's lots of ways to come at it. I mean, the simplest is just to use simple alt text a lot of the time those images don't need to, they don't need long complex description so that is actually a very simple way to come at it. But it does, it does help us come back to this question of knowing how to test. I think that that's actually a skill that we all need I certainly need to learn it. I need to be able to see the world from one of our potential readers point of view and I use the wrong verb there shouldn't be see I need to hear what those books are like and to, to understand how to test a little bit better. And I think that that's a major piece of the puzzle here. We can write alt text for fixed layout books. I'm not sure that the reading systems are actually picking it up, exactly as we mean them to pick it up. And so I think there's still work there to be done. I wanted to circle back to the thing at the beginning about, you know, I agree with Matt Chan and that this isn't, you know, making an accessible ebook is laborious and involves a number of steps but it actually isn't that hard. That sounds crazy to say out loud, especially when it feels like there's a number of barriers and in front of getting to a place where you're just making really accessible ebooks, especially for micro publishers or whatever. So it's not that hard. There is but there is work to do to learn how to do it. And, and if we go back to what I can't remember who said this yesterday but I think it was Lori from seal as she said that that 93% of the content that's being published right now is not accessible that there still is a real famine in terms of what is getting published right now and how accessible it is. So if it's not that hard then why isn't there more content that's meeting standard. And I think that what it boils down to is that publishers need more support. Charles, do you want to have your hand raised Sure. I agree with you there. Your point on, it's not that hard. And, you know, when we look at a book, let's say ace gives you, if you run it through the automatic checker, and it gives you like 1500 errors right or warnings and you're like, Oh my God, how am I going to fix all this it's like that's just daunting right. The problem is, is probably just one or two issues. That's really the problem and you're repeating the same mistake over and over and over again. And so it's just calculating keeps adding those all up. And even, you know, we're seeing with some of the, you know, the publishers, the books that we're looking at where you, I think some of the worst, maybe was like eight main issues. And that, you know, constitute like two or 3000, you know, errors and warnings and the like, but, and we break it down and you're just okay now I need to fix that how to do a link or what have you and it's like, Okay, but you have like 500 links now in your book so you have to go and fix it. That's the tedious part. The thing is when you fix it in your pipeline, so that you know you're doing it, fix it once there, then if you just rerun the book through your pipeline, theoretically that could fix like 500 mistakes. So that's just something to be aware of that, you know, it seems like it's daunting but it might not really be in actuality. I keep muting myself to take a drink of water so you don't have to hear me slurping and then I forget the muted sorry. Matt I think you want to come in. Just on the note of fixing one thing that has a ripple effect that fixes like 500 other things is that when we're talking about education. And we're talking about explaining why weren't accessible is important why accessibility is important. I think a good addition to that would be to say, you know how would be to explain how easy it is to make changes through modifying your tools or your tool chain. How if you have limited resources and limited time, you can really amplify the resources and time that you have by making those changes at the tools level. One thing I just want to mention there, Matt, follow on to that is in our certification program, we sort of like, you know, like I mentioned, these are the must fix these are the next level and these are the nice to have. So you have a clear idea of where you need to focus your energy, as well. So that these are the things that I must fix. And then it's like, Oh, if I, you know what, this one's not that hard. I'll put throw that one in, you know, and then you have an accessible book, and then you can always, as you're going later on you can put it in your roadmap that's like, Well, let's knock off this other. I would strongly suggest the thing that Benetech says or someone says that would be really nice to improve our accessibility. And you can just sort of like take bite size chunks, fix the main things that's going to get you certified and passing and created an accessible book, and then start looking at these other ones, and some of the low hanging fruit that you can easily fix in your pipeline. Thanks. Yeah, I just wanted to go back to that 1500 number and just kind of how it of errors, kind of how it encapsulates that feeling of hitting a wall and not knowing how to approach that or how to go on and even for a much smaller wall I think it can still be really difficult to know how to move forward and one thing that we a piece of feedback we received after we finished up our training with our publishers with Nels was great I've had every question answered that I had up until today. But tomorrow I'm going to run into a whole bunch of new things that I'm not going to have this program anymore to come back with my questions. And I wondered, Deborah, if this was part of what you have been talking about yesterday about the portal. So one suggestion that came out of this program was if we're able to create some kind of recurring meet up or some kind of online forum where when you run into these really specific issues that publishers can have a place that they can meet up and share some knowledge and maybe have some expertise available to them on a specific issue by issue basis. Yes, that is an excellent question thank you Chantel. So the way we envision it is it sort of being monitored by ebound staff for two reasons one people may not be able to find what they want specifically. It's an all instance of people's experience. And then if questions are reoccurring, putting together a forum. Part of our benefit certification process is going to be hiring contract people and also training some of our staff to have that certification expertise that will be ongoing. We don't have the ability to dip into their their knowledge base but yes there will have to be ongoing specific, you know, feedback loops to get people questions as they come become available. The one thing I wanted to raise this is something Rhianna and I were talking about off off screen. She wonders if it doesn't make sense to include authors in these conversations, especially as they're writing the books from the get go and and and folding them into the conversation about accessibility I think makes really good sense. Anyway, I would love to know what everyone thinks about that especially people who work directly with authors. I think one of the, one of the suggestions that came up earlier today, which was around incorporating some of the accessibility language and workflow in your contract is really important. And in that way to to incorporate authors as well. I think it's something that really makes sense to talk about and I served on the board of the Saskatchewan Writers Guild for seven years. And so accessibility was something that I would bring up at those meetings and I think it is something that writers need to know about and think about. If they decide to publish if they don't decide to publish I think it's a conversation that makes sense for everybody to be a part of who's who's part of the sector. It just it makes sense. I agree I wonder if it doesn't make sense to talk to somebody like john. Last thing I'm not going to remember at the writers union, and to to be having these conversations in other places as well. Kate do you want to jump in. And I don't work directly with authors but I know something that has come up in discussions around the topic at a VP and you know it's it and there is comments I think touched on this to in terms of the technical expertise required to write battle text and and can make those contributions and whether, whether all authors are prepared to do that or or have have the skill to do it that's maybe a separate discussion but the other piece on of this, and going back to your comment Laura about the training and Nancy is doing is is having the skills in house to be able to, you know, take that, say you do outsource it to build it into the author contract and then the editor gets it. How do they know that it's it's going to meet the standard required. How do they, what's the editorial work that needs to be done. There's a whole other workflow that everybody in the editorial process is involved in and it's, it's training and discussion on a lot of different, different levels. I think to you know, I, this is a different topic but you know there's there's marketing and promotion work that authors are sometimes expected or take on in terms of social media and some of them are really good at it and some of them are not as strong at it and and this is another, you know another, if it's a joint effort, some recognition on both parts of what's required and and playing to people strengths. It's really good point. Yeah. Sometimes I feel like authors are maybe too close to the content and can't write good alt text because it needs to be a step back. It's really complex things like, you know, bar charts or images that are, you know, science diagrams. I think they're the only people who can describe those things well sometimes that do you want to answer or to jump into the conversation. Yes, I'm unmuted. Just, you know, the contrary perspective I guess on this one. And when I do a lot of work with authors over the years as an editor and then I work with self published author that authors these days as well. And in my view it's getting them to tag headings in a word doc is for me so daunting that most of the time I don't even bother mentioning it to them. As far as they know the only tool available for formatting Word document is the tab key. And so then, you know, beyond that I just cringe. It gives me physical pain to try and get them into all tagging and did and I, you know, structure, please just some minimal structure. Anyway, so you get my point I am just dreading it. Sarah. I, I'm firmly of the kind of belief in all things that if you raise people's awareness and get their buy in by including them in the conversation, then it can only be a good thing. I believe authors understood what we were trying to achieve here, the reasons why, and possibly the business case as well but the more philanthropical philosophical philosophical philosophical conversation. So we really might hit home with them and if they understood what we're doing, they might actually be just want to be part of the process and we can't lump them all into one bucket and expect them all to behave this in the same way. So at every chance that a good bunch of authors will get on board and wants to be involved and I think it would be really interesting to include them in these conversations just to kind of see where they're at and what the level of knowledge and awareness is And Nancy, I can speak to the structure, the thing that that brought up about structure are manuscripts come to us and they're often, you know, a dog's breakfast there's a whole thorough range of what they could look like. And editorial sort of structures them by putting their own kind of markup language around headers and block quotes and small caps and that kind of thing. We're trying to migrate them to actually just formatting, but editors don't like change. I don't know if you all know that they don't. They're like authors. And they don't like being told what to do I've learned. I have them now doing italics properly so that when something's read into our layout software it doesn't lose the italics, which is a, you know, a step forward, but getting them to actually just format the manuscripts properly using built in styles and word is a real uphill battle. It's like a microcosm of the larger conversation about getting authors to put structure into their documents. I know at nulls in some of the work that we've been doing in the publisher education projects have been working a little bit directly with authors, creating their own all text for audio books and for Braille print books. And I know that like a couple of the authors that I worked with for even just regular Braille books. There was one author who actually has a blind partner and had no idea that her poetry book was so inaccessible that he would never be able to read it in the way that she created it. And she said that like, had she thought about the process of converting her poetry book into Braille at the beginning, she would have written it completely different. And I've talked to a children's book author as well who said that like, it's really just the process of going through audio book creation and alt text and image descriptions and graphics and picture that you can touch and feel and things like that and the processes behind it, she also would have, you know, chose to write in a different way, where maybe that alt text necessarily wasn't needed, because it was already parent in the writing, and maybe it's not necessarily text heavy but maybe just better descriptive language was used instead of relying on the pictures to tell the story. I think that like there is something we thought about including authors in the process and making the awareness there, but I mean I think it's definitely like not everybody's going to buy in. Like Laura said people can be stubborn and not be, you know, can be very resistant to change, right. And I understand that like, it's a creative process to write. You don't want to interrupt the creativity but it's hard to think of new ways to make that creativeness accessible. I work with a publisher called book hug I make all of their ebooks. They are, they do a lot of experimental stuff a lot of poetry, a lot of stuff that looks interesting on the page but doesn't translate excessively very well. I have actually trained their layout people and trained the publisher on how to do this a little bit differently. And they're now actually pushing back on their authors and saying, if we're going to make an accessible ebook of this, it's not going to work so maybe you want to rethink that page. They're regularly sending things back to their writers and asking them to rethink it from an accessibility point of view. And they're hoping to be an ebounds accessibility pilot or certification pilot and they're taking this very seriously. And it's really nice to see, especially for a small literary publisher that does really experimental stuff. So it's possible. Charles, do you want to come into the conversation. Yeah, thanks. That's really interesting how an author would decide to adjust how they're going to write a book based on making it accessible. And it actually has a lot of parallels to the video industry. That if you have a video that you've created and now you have closed captioning right, which is all the spoken part, but then you have to have described audio on what's happening in the scene that doesn't have any, any, any spoken parts to it. And there's some actually I think a Canadian group is doing this where they're, they're changing the manuscript that they're basically telling the authors. Let's not have the need for described audio let's describe what we're doing in the in the narrative. You know, and then wouldn't need it and a simple example was, they showed a video where this real estate agent basically dropped a sign in front of the house that there's an open house to right and then they walk in the door where no text was spoken but instead let me just put this, you know, open house sign here to draw in the customers or what have you, and, and then you didn't need the described audio so it was really a neat neat thing that I saw a couple years ago at a summit, but has this idea that we could actually do this in books to which is a neat concept. One of the questions on my initial remit that we haven't really swung around to is the question of how to best manage the conversation when conversion work is outsourced. And I want this is a fairly big question. And I wonder if people want to talk about that if that's something worthwhile here, I think it is. I don't we don't outsource what we do it in Nancy but I know a lot of publishers do especially small publisher through ebound and otherwise. And I think it's worthy of, you know, structuring some comments around. Karen do you want to weigh in. Sure, I was going to actually raise this. So, I read your mind. You did you read my mind twice today now. Karen. Most of my members do not create their own ebooks they outsource them. And in fact one of the ones that I spoke with before the panel they send their content to a company in the Philippines. Prior to that they were sending it to a country, a company in India. So, it makes me wonder, how do we meet the accessibility requirements for those e pub files that are being created overseas or outside of Canada. And what can we do to build capacity within Canada, so that there are economical options, because obviously they're doing it for business reasons. Because it's cheaper. And so how do we build capacity in Canada so we can keep that work here and and have it be as relevant as possible to the standards and the goals that we have. These are burning question for these are big big questions. The question of keeping the work in Canada is one that I honestly keeps me awake at night. It's hard to be competitive with overseas conversion houses, but if this whole big huge accessibility project is going to be successful after the five years of but the Canada book fund has been tasked with. We need to be able to remediate ebooks with Canadian labor and we need to be able to convert books in Canada we need to have a pool of labor who can do that work and building that capacity is a really big deal. Deb, do you want to. You look like you're going to. Yeah, I'm going to. Yes, not explode. Yes. We all feel the pain of having to outsource our content. No, you know beyond our borders in our public in our benefit certification pilot, we got approval to get one Canadian supplier or conversion partner certified benefit certified. And we've got feelers out to a number of different organizations who are looking internally to address exactly the issue you brought up Laura is can they afford to get this business can they afford to do this work. So at some point we're going to have to have a serious conversation about you know, at what point and to what expense do we keep it in Canada or not. The other thing I just wanted to mention is ebound partnered with nails last year, and we did a best practices in outsourcing your content for accessible conversion. And I will share the link to that in our chat. It talks about what the publishers can do internally to start the process of making their workflow accessible. It talks about how to have conversations with your conversion partner what to ask for. And as you know it's a chart with 15 different topics and questions they can ask. And then the last part is talking about how do they q a it when they get their files back from their conversion partners. So it's a really specific hands on tool to make people aware of its existence. So ideally, everybody would build the capacity internally, but I think conversion partners do play a role, particularly in handing huge backlist, right, because publishers don't want to go back and touch it twice. But I think by even having these conversations with conversion partners, they're building the capacity to know what to look for. And if you know how to test for it. So first step in figuring out how to integrate it from the beginning next time. Okay, so many hands raised. It's very exciting. It's, I think that there's a role here with with regional partners and regional provincial governments as well. The majority of Canada have of Canadian provinces have governments that are very interested in developing local economies. And so one of the things that happens with some of with some of the publishing grants available and publishing support available, provincially certainly in Saskatchewan is that publishers applications can be ranked higher if they are in the adjudication process, if they are using local people to do, whether it's conversion or whether it's, it's doing any form of any part of the production right off the hop. So that's an incentive to to get, you know, to sort of keep this part of the workflow in Canada. The challenge then becomes on the in the long term, making sure that you have those people locally who can do it. And so, you know that's something that we've been looking at for a while as well. There's a role there for economic development and looking at looking outside of government departments not for a handout Bert but for incentives and working with ministries of trade and, and, you know, just finding ways of maybe even looking at other jurisdictions to do with with tax credits perhaps in some of the film industries, which I know that's kind of a dirty word in some places but anyway, that's that was my thinking there. I think you're next, you want to jump in. Who's that. Yeah, that's you. Yep. Okay, sorry. So, as some you know I consult a Canadian electronic library in Ottawa, who do ton of this conversion and are benetech certified. However, they do farm out the hands on part to India. So, does that then create the perception they're not Canadian, or are you Canadian if you manage the projects in Canada, but outsource a portion of the labor, how do people see that. That's a good question. And, and my take on this as I would like to see the work staying here completely and being done by Canadian hands but I'd love to hear what other people think of that. So I'll jump in if that's okay. Yeah, when we put the test for quotes for our digital accessible publishing project. There was no no one in Canada who could compete. First of all, for the price and secondly for the capacity to deliver in a timely fashion and so we are going outside of Canada for this project which bothers me, but the the Canadian, the Canadian quotes kid we're just not competitive. I know you work with with Bob. Is that still the perception that it's sort of half Canadian or something like that. To us it's it's not Canadian if we're farming it out to India. But even if the head office and the control of the project is in Canada. Yeah, yeah, that's the question in my mind is how it's perceived. Yeah, and it was it was a back and forth. Sarah and I had several conversations about this because we are value is to keep the work in Canada and yet from a practical project management even position we couldn't do it. Just to jump in quickly, because even has been managing many of these conversion projects. It's also an issue of international capacity so you know these these conversion partners getting really backed up with all these projects. They're feeling it as well. And so not only do we look for cost we look at timelines we also look at quality. Now CEL is benetech approved so that's great but from a timelines perspective, we all have, you know, fiscal year ends that we need to have content delivered by so that's where there's another complicating factor. Kevin here from the libraries co op can I share some thoughts. Yep. I'm the executive director of the BC libraries co op where the nails is one of this one of our services. And we're working very closely with CEL on a number of fronts. What I'm about to offer is not a panacea for this question I'll give you my own bias to the question of, what is the level of work with the work qualify for being Canadian is as a, as a organization that employs testers with lived experience who lived in Canada, live in Canada. My preference would be for us to try to have processes or desires as much as we can so that we're employing folks in this country. That's where we can folks with lived experience and I think there's a number of good reasons for that. One of the things it's not complete but one of the things that allows us to contribute to this work. In addition to the funding, the five year cycle of funding from the Canada book fund has been an annual allotment from the federal government through those office if folks are aware of this. It's $4 million a year split between CELA and NELS. And that's been going on for a number of years, money for which we're extremely grateful money which actually covers the cost of this summit and so just hear me out in the fall we received notice from the federal government that for the first time there would be multi a multi year commitment to this funding that decreases by 25% over the next three years to zero. So at the for this fiscal so CELA and NELS have a total of $4 million to do accessible publishing work nationally. Next year we will have $3 million from the federal government and so on and so on until three or four years down the road there's nothing allocated. Now of course we're advocating for that not to happen, and that not to be the case, but I do want to point out that there could be a collective conversation with the federal government about the benefit of that funding and possibly other types of funding to how we think about the nature of this work over the long term. And I just wanted to highlight that because I do think it could impact in one component the capacity in Canada for folks in Canada to be a part of the overall solution to this question. Thank you. Sarah do you want you've had your hand raised for a bit do you want to jump in. Sure. I just wanted to come back to the question maybe of conversion projects. I know we recently released the third call for projects, and we looked at this, the question of capacity in the context of that call and in the way that we structured the call. One of the things we've done is we've, we put an initial cap on conversion projects, but open the door for the possibility that if there's a conversion project that can demonstrate that there is a component that is building capacity within Canada, that that funding could exceed that cap. So we were seeing a number of conversion projects underway in different parts of the country. And it's sort of a conversation that we've been talking a lot about internally the idea of, and I talked about it a bit yesterday but that sort of longer term legacy of the project, or the initiative and the idea of, you know, the people that are doing accessible publishing work within Canada, wherever that's coming from whether that's coming from the schools whether that's coming from within companies, whether that's Canadian companies that are, you know, whether that's collective internships, whatever that looks like. We think that there's, there's space to maybe tackle it in different ways we don't have the answer. I don't know if that's going to be there as to, you know, what is a long term but I think that the point that I would make in terms of competitive quotes is that in some instances, there is an interest when it comes to public funders in other factors or other considerations, like the public good of seeing, you know, capacity being built within Canada. That's fantastic. All of that is so great Sarah thank you for jumping in. It's really nice to see that being prioritized. Charles and that both have your hand raised is it on purpose, or is it lingering. Sure. Okay, go ahead Charles. Yeah this whole thing about, you know, having the conversion part of it overseas is. Fortunately, it's reality, because you can't pay even here in the US, we can't pay someone in the US and you sure can't pay someone in Canada, the salary to that for minimum wage even to do these descriptions that, you know, we're competing against folks that are doing it for like Nichols and dimes overseas potentially. That's just, you know, the thing is, the then the publisher to do that would have to pass those costs on to the consumer, and you're not going to have a person that you know you have two books out there that are very similar, one done with Canadian, you have a conversion vendor that's doing everything in Canada, and it costs like 15 times more than a book with the exact same content. It's not like, you know, farmers and you have the organic option versus the, you know, the, the commercial product that you think customers are going to look and go, I can't spend, you know, 50, you know $50 on this book where I can get the same book practically for five bucks or less. So I think it's inevitable, but I think that having it, you know, managed in Canada, you know, like the Canadian electronic library is doing, and then, you know, they're that's your quality control that's, you know, where you're going to get them to sign off and say, yeah, the work that we're getting, you know, is to our high standards, and, you know, and they can be competitive versus, you know, if they had to do it all in Canada, you're just not going to get that same price at all, not even close. Can I just jump in there just for a second, Laura. Yeah, I will say that maybe one difference in Canada is that we do offer federal funding for internships, both for individual publishers, and for organizations and associations, it's not a long term solution like I totally get that but it is a capacity piece that I we've seen a number of publishers use very effectively in very different ways and we and we are. We have done a couple of rounds of funding now that that includes accessibility as one area that you can use a technology intern to things like that that you can work on so I mean there there is there are opportunities here as well that may not be available elsewhere. I think we have an excellent tech intern at a Nancy who I don't want to tell her about the ebound certification pilot because she might jump ship and then I will be mad. Kate do you want to. Oh, you're muted Kate. My hand down down instead of unmuting, but both were muted and building on what Sarah was just saying about where there might be opportunities and this is, I really appreciate the comments that have made about the, the, you know the bottom line and the economics of all of this but I have a couple of examples of smaller publishers who early in the, the journey through ebook development actually ended up selling those services to small US presses who didn't have that capacity in those. And as a, we have a small market here and there's fewer companies here, which is a factor around all these discussions around capacity building but if. And this is the blue sky thinking piece but if it if this opportunity and a legacy of the CBF initiative is positioning Canadian publishers and whether it's independent publishers or service providers who work with them as experts in this field. Does that allow us an export opportunity to have other publishers and other countries coming to us for this work. And bringing, I mean that's just earned revenue towards someone's bottom line right but also making making the services available to Canadians first. It's a fantastic question. Before I went to work at a Nancy about three years ago I was doing conversions on my own running a sort of a conversion house and more than 50% of my clients were American. And there was a lot of business coming from there. And there's still lots of potential for sure and I think that's a really good way to look at it to monetize those skills. And just one more. I mean another industry that benefits from that Canadian printers who have a, the dollar working in their favor as well but they, they do it kind of business with us. And have excellent quality and service. That's a good point. Deb, I don't want to, I would don't want you to forget to drop that link about how to talk to conversion partners in the chat. I did a quick look around for that on your website but I couldn't find that. So, thanks. Have we solved all the problems. What are the outstanding questions. Sorry, who spoke. Yep. I'm wondering about page numbers. And what you all are like, where is this. We have like a lot of Canadian publishers doing both print and digital or all digital first and where does page numbers fit into into all of this. It's definitely something that we grapple with and, you know, in the GCA and trying to get those page numbers to be done. But just was wondering for your all perspective on that. I can tell you what we do at a Nancy. We definitely put print corollary page numbers in all of our ebooks we use a script that I worked with a guy in New Zealand to develop the script for me that works in in design and then there's a post export script to translate what we call those page stakes to the actual page list so that somebody can navigate by a by a print page numbers it's an important piece of the accessibility puzzle. That's the first thing. That's how we work at a Nancy I'm curious to hear about how other people approach this issue. It's really mostly publisher support organizations here not publishers so maybe don't know the answer. Matt, do you want to speak to this. Yeah, and we do it the way that Lord described because we're so married to an in design first workflow. So if that is not the case for the specific publisher that you're advising, and that may, then what Lord just said may not, you know, be as applicable, although it certainly is like a very good way of doing it. That's an important correction. Thanks Matt. Sarah. If I could put a question on the table we've talked a lot about the books I was wondering if there's particular publisher needs or issues around with working with audio books and audio production. I know it's often not done in house but just wondering if we could maybe have a bit of a conversation about that. Julian. Yeah, we're that's I'm really glad you asked about this Sarah because that's something that that we're, we've been surveying our publishers about through, particularly because of the programming that we're offering currently for audio book production. And what we've discovered is that there's an awful lot of people who are doing audio books and there's an awful lot of people who are doing them themselves. And that's great. But there's not an awful lot of people that even know that there are accessibility issues in audio books. And so we just found some of the best practices from the Nells website that that we're going to be incorporating into into our audio book mentorship programs. And for the subsidy that we want to be able to offer to our publishers where we're needing those books those audio books that they produce to be accessible. And I, it's an important question to ask because I think with public with micro publishers. I'm not sure that they know that an audio book isn't just automatically accessible, and I'm not sure that they know what accessibility features might be in an audio book. So I think there's some PD there that that can really be utilized. I just want to tell here also jump in to say that that was when we did a survey after our wrap up of art books, training and file reviews with Nells that was one of the feedback that we received as well can we get accessible audio book training next please so yeah it's definitely something that would be very valuable. We've been working for a number of years I mentioned this at the beginning with the CNIB to create accessible audio books. And their process is to create the accessible version first and then to kind of strip it down a bit I guess to make it into the, the, the general audio book that's for sale. So a lot of our members are also working with ECW press with David Karen to produce audio books. And I'm actually not sure if those are all accessible or not. They're ECW processes are they would hit the majority of the accessibility standards we discovered this week talking to ECW. And then the other piece for, for our members. We have one publisher is actually producing e audio books herself. But most of them would go outside their company to help them produced. ECW is definitely on the ball. Sorry, I interrupted somebody. That's fine. No, I was just going to mention that, you know, with Bookshare, Benetech, all of the books that come in can get converted into an audio book a daisy audio book so we know we have like close to a million books now that are is in our library that could be potentially converted into an audio book on demand. So these now with the Marrakesh Treaty, and the, you know, those, those open books free public domain books. There's a potential there for getting access to that. I'm pretty sure Nels does that kind of thing as well the conversion to daisy talking books. Deb says ebound is in the process of completing a best practices and outsourcing audio book creation guide. That's great. That's perfect. That's exactly what a lot of us need. Yeah. Chantel, do you want to say that comment in the live and in person. I just, when Charles, you had asked about the page numbers I just tried to bring up a recent document on my computer here we put out a call for accessible ebooks for our library pilot project. And we had worked with Nels to come up with a checklist for publishers to check off the various accessibility features that were part of their EPUB threes. I just asked about tagging page numbers and page list, and I just brought it up to see kind of how many of them had checked off that specific one and very few, I would say maybe five to 10 of the 400 books that are on that submission list. And then I also noted that in our feedback on the recent PD that we offered that was a specific request for what our next PD sessions might be around. So I think, yeah, that I wouldn't have any knowledge really on how they've been approaching it because it doesn't seem like it's been one of the steps that they've really made it to yet but it's definitely something that they've learned about and heard about over the past few months and are starting to think about how they can make that work. I just dropped a link into the chat. This is details about the page list script that I use it's in this article and I'm happy to share the scripts that I use Chantel if you want to email me or hit me up and I'm happy to do a little demo about how to use them for your members for sure. I think page list is really a very simple way to really level up your ebook production and there's no way to do it automatically from InDesign so the scripting solution is the best way that I know. I'm being told that we have two minutes left here and then we need to go back to the main room. Any, any, any parting shots, any last salvos. Do you like say that from like my former work was in the education sector in all formats and print pagination was like a deal breaker if you didn't have it for book club or for your classroom use like that like that was half of the remediation work that I used to do. Yeah, it was for print pagination so the fact that it's being incorporated now is huge. So thank you. Matt. I'm reaching to the choir here I know but the capacity building piece that we discussed today. So so important to me. I think we take it for granted a little bit that we hear in North America and in Canada specifically have the expertise to be leaders in this accessibility space but if you don't do the work then, you know, you don't get to continue to do that. It's like I read. It's like I trained you or something. Okay, we're, we're now being told to go back to the main room. Thank you very much everybody will be carrying this conversation on again tomorrow so please come back if you want to we're going to solve all the world's problems I promise. Thanks everyone Laura. Thank you.