 My name is Patrick Bouchard. I am an accessibility analyst with NELS and I'm going to be talking about the process of discovering accessible ebooks in a commercial setting so from online bookstores. So most books nowadays are born digital. They're created using writing software on a computer or other similar device and are simultaneously released in digital and paper formats. Which is good for equal access because books that are born digital are more likely to be born accessible which allows everyone to enjoy them as soon as they're published. It's not like it was 20 years ago when I had to wait two months for the second half of a Harry Potter book to arrive. I mean that's certainly ratcheted up the suspense, but it's not exactly an equal experience. So things have definitely come a long way since then. But there are still several pitfalls to be aware of when searching for accessible ebooks. Firstly, older books which were not born digital but later converted into a digital format may have been converted in a way that doesn't make their text readable by a screen reader. And while the text of born digital books is usually readable by screen readers, other elements might not be things like images, charts, footnotes, these things all need to be tagged properly for a screen reader to be able to read them correctly. Not all publishers do this and not all reading apps support these tags even if the publishers do include them. And this is where accessibility metadata is so important because it allows a publisher to specify which accessibility features their books support and it allows a bookstore to pass this information along and clarify which of these features their app supports. This way, a blind reader such as myself can know ahead of time if a book is going to meet my needs and if buying it on a certain platform will allow me to fully read the book. So I'm going to demonstrate the process of searching for ebooks on some of the largest, most well-known online bookstores out there, Kindle, Kobo and Apple Books. And we're going to explore what accessibility information they share about the books that they sell and how I might go about determining if a book is going to meet my needs. So we already have the Kindle app on my screen here. So we're going to start with that and we're going to search for a book. Kent's search field is editing. We're in the search field already. So I'm going to search for a 10. Dragging title, Mason. Resolve submit. We're going to find the book I'm looking for. Dragging Mason County, Curtis Campbell, book not downloaded button. And I'm going to open the book details screen. Alert book details, book detail, Kindle, discover new books. Dragging Mason County by Curtis and speaking rate headings to explore the screen. We're going to skip ahead to the about the Kindle edition section. Dragging Mason County, heading buying options, heading download sample, book overview, heading level one. Spoiler alert, accessibility information will not usually be in the overview section. That's more of the synopsis about the Kindle edition heading level two. Here we go. So let's explore this section. Bullet link length to 190 pages link bullet link screen reader supported link. OK, so it's a screen reader supported. That's certainly good news. That makes me believe that I shouldn't be able to read this book. It's also a link so I can double tap it to get some more information. Screen back heading level four link about the Kindle edition. Lang to the estimated length is calculated using the number of page turns on a Kindle screen reader supported heading level three. The text of this ebook can be read by many popular screen readers. Voice view on fire tablets and Kindle readers voiceover on iOS talk back on Android and NVIDIA on Windows descriptive text for images known as ALT text can be read using the Kindle for PC app if the publisher has included it. If this ebook contains other types of non text content, for example, some charts and math equations that content will not currently be read by screen readers. See the Kindle accessibility page to learn more. So there's some good information here. It specifically lists voiceover on iOS as a screen reader that's supported, which is good because that's what I'm using. It also tells me that alt text for images or image descriptions will be read. Using the Kindle for PC app if the publisher included them. But there are two problems with that. First, this is not a PC as I've already outlined. It's an iOS device that I'm using. And second, it doesn't tell me if the publisher included image descriptions. It just says that if they did the Kindle for PC app will read them. So that leaves me a little bit less confident that I'm going to be able to fully enjoy this book. If there are images with important information in them. I may not be able to read their description. I may be left out. So let's say I'm not going to buy this book right now. I'm going to back out and I'm going to search for another book. Maybe a different book will have different accessibility information. Discover a new book. Done. Button. Done. Dragging Mason County. Search field. There's a search field. Insertion. What's in there? D. And you're going to search for a different book. Result. The Giver. Giver Quartet. Book one. Lois Lowry. Book not downloaded. Button. OK. And again, I'm going to open the book details. Alert book details. Book detail. Discover new books. The Giver. Giver Quartet. Book one in Lois Lowry. Going to jump to the about the Kindle Edition section. Text select headings about the Kindle Edition heading level two. And we're going to explore this bullet link due to its large file size. This book may take longer to download bullet link length to 139 pages. Link bullet word wise enabled bullet enhanced typesetting enabled bullet page flip enabled link from the publisher heading level three. So this book, it does not say it's screen reader supported at all. So that leads me to believe I may not be able to read even the text of this book. Now, there is one other way I can get a sense of how accessible a book might be. And that is by downloading and reading the sample. And we already passed the sound load sample link. So I'm going to go back up. We're headings about the Kindle Edition book over download sample button heading. Well, it's samples. I'm going to do that download sample heading. Read now link and going to read now. Opening Kindle double tap for menu. And we're going to explore this just for a minute image. The title page reads the giver written by Lois Laurie published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Boston, New York image contents link cover link title page link contents link copyright link dedication link chapter 15 link chapter 16 link chapter copyright link image copyright copy a division of Harper Collins publishers 195 Broadway East 978 05 dedication link for all the children to whom we entrust the future one link it was almost December and Jonas was beginning to be frightened. No, wrong word. Jonas thought frightened meant that deep. Sickening feeling of something terrible about to happen. Frightened was the way he had felt a year ago when an unidentified aircraft had overflown the community twice. OK, I think that's enough. So it does seem like I'm able to read the text of this book. But images are less certain. I mean, I've already been told that the Kindle for iOS app doesn't support them. And I think I think that's been proven because that first page, the cover page, it just said image. It didn't describe that image to me. So, you know, the text seems to be readable, but images are a big question mark. And even the text is still like I'm still not 100 percent confident in that because while the text I've been able to read so far has been accessible because it's not specified as being accessible. There could be problems later on in the book where maybe some text is not properly accessible and I could end up missing out on something. Because, yeah, because it's not certified as being accessible, I don't have that assurance that it is. So again, I'm less likely to buy this book and, you know, all of a sudden Amazon and the author and the publisher have all lost a sale because the book is not identified as being fully accessible to me. So let's say I really want to read this book. Let's say I want to try a different platform. Maybe, maybe Kobo has it in a fully accessible format. Maybe I'll be able to read the book fully on Kobo. So let's switch to the Kobo app. App switcher, Kindle, Voice Dream, Kobo Books, Active. Kobo Books, Sync Library, Sync Library. I want to do the same thing. We're going to search for the same book. Evox, Search, Button. Here's the search field. Search, Cancel, Button. Search for Books or Audio Books, Text Field. Insertion point at end. Search for the same title. In my books, Z in Store, 164, Filters. The giver by Lois Laurie, 145. The giver. And we're going to explore this detail screen. A Newberry Award winner. Giver Quartet number one by Lois Laurie, Rate. Save Preview. Want to get the full book? Reviews, 19, Synopsis. In Lois Lowry's Newberry Medal winning classic, 12 year old Jonas lives in a seemingly ideal world. Not until he is given, select this to read full description of this book, Link. Maybe it's behind here. Select this to back button. Synopsis, in Lois Lowry's Newberry Medal winning classic, life in the community where Jonas lives is not until he is given his life assignment as the told with deceptive simplicity. This is the giver has become one of the most influential the giver has become. OK, so I just expands the synopsis. It does not open other information about the book. So let's go back. The giver, a Newberry Award winner, Giver Quartet number one to get the reviews, 19, in Lois Lowry, select this to read full description. OK, here's where we were related titles. Son by Lois Laurie, Son by Lois Laurie. Oh, OK. And that's the end of the screen. So no, there is no accessibility information about this book on Kobo either. So again, I'm left to uncertain as to how accessible it will be. But maybe maybe that's just the book. Maybe Kobo will have a dragging Mason County in an accessible format. And it'll maybe it'll tell me about that. So let's go back. Let's get out of here and search for that. Cancel the giver button, the giver text field text. Captee, dragging Mason, dragging Mason County by Curtis Campbell, narrated by Justin Miller. Filters, dragging Mason County by Curtis Campbell. And we're going to do the same thing. Dragging Mason County by Curtis Campbell. Rate, restore to library, but want to get the full book? Reviews, zero synopsis, a timely tale of friendship, self-acceptance, and the importance of proper contouring. Select this to read full description of this book. Link also available as audio book related titles. One small thing by Aaron Watt. Someone else's summer by someone else's. Okay, so again, we've reached the end of the details screen and there is no mention of accessibility. So I am, it's left up in the air whether or not it's accessible. Now, like with Kindle, I can open a sample of the book to determine how accessible it is. So let's go and do that. Review, want to get restore to library button. And it says restore to library because I've run through this before. Downloading, dim. Just the same. Read preview, button. Read the preview. Close the book. Book is opened. Cover, Dragging Mason County by Curtis Campbell. Making a scene in the middle of nowhere. Image, the snouts of a cow, an alpaca, and a she-chew with the bright green wig of a drag performer. The upper part of the performer's face shows one raised eyebrow and heavy makeup. Image, close the book, button. Next page, button. Next page. One of six in chapter. Serves a hilarious, heartwarming story of acceptance and bravery. All while boasting a sickening cast of characters with charisma, uniqueness, nerd, and talent to spare. M-dash. Eric J. Brown. Okay, so again, it does seem like I'm able to read the text of this book. And it also seems that I'm able to read image descriptions for this book. You heard the cover image, which was certainly not described in the Kindle app. It was described in the Kobo app. So it seems like Kobo does have this book in an accessible form. But because they don't tell me that, I could have easily missed this. If I didn't think to open the sample or if I didn't have time to explore the sample, I would have passed right by this book because it's not listed as accessible. So again, they may have lost out on a sale. In this case, not because the book is inaccessible, but because they don't market that because the metadata is not there, which is very disappointing. But let's check Apple Books because Apple is a company that is well known for its commitment to accessibility. And let's see if that extends to their books and how much accessibility information they share about them. App Switcher. What do you switch to? Voice Dream. Safari. Books. Active. Apps. Books. Search. Heading. Books and audio books. Search field. Search field. Search field. Search field. Search field. Search field. Search field. Type. Mason. Gretchen's Miss. Dragging Mason. Dragging Mason. Dragging Mason County by Curtis Campbell. Dragging Mason County. Curtis Campbell. Book. Zero stars. Zero ratings. Dragging Mason. Close. And again, let's explore the detailed screen for this book. Cover. Image. Dragging Mason County. Heading. Author. Curtis. Give. Button. More actions. Button. Buy for $10.99. Want to read. A. Sample. Button. View the audio book. Dragging Mason County. Unabridged by Curtis Campbell. Heading. Small Town Connections. Highlight Square Small Town Life. With an F. More. Button. Heading. Peter Tompkins. An openly gay high schooler. Has gone viral. An F. More. Button. Genre. Young Adult. Released. 2023. October 3rd. Language. EN. English. Length. 312. Pages. Publisher. On Eat Press. Seller. Ed on Canada. Size. 2.0. MB. More audio books by Curtis Campbell. Dragging Mason County. Unabridged. Curtis. Top books and fiction for young adult. Killing Mr. Griffin by Lois Duncan. OK, so we're getting into the related books, which tells me we're past the information for this book. And again, there is no information about how accessible it is. So that could mean it's not accessible, or that could mean it is, but they don't pass the information on. Which again leaves me less than completely certain about buying this book. Now again, I could open the sample and perhaps get a better idea. But I've demonstrated that twice already. So I'm going to skip that. So online bookstores share very little information about how accessible their books are. So it falls to a third party source to compile and share that information. One website experimenting with doing that is CatDB, or the Canadian Accessible Title Database. So what I can do is I can go to their website, which I have open in a browser. App switcher, book kit, voice tree, safari, active. Open that up. Search titles by ISBN. Title, keyword and description. Search field is editing. Search, landmark, search, insertion point at start. Their site for a book. So I'm going to search for the same book. Cat raw, G, in G, space, dragging. Eh, eh, on, space, Mason. Caps lock off. What was on? Why? OK. CatDB. Here we go. Search results, heading level one. At the results. Dragging Mason County, heading level two. Link, Curtis Campbell. And we found the correct book. Accessibility, heading level three. So here's accessibility information for this book. Elements, unknown, white bullet, list start. Accessibility summary, click to filter by, link. This title has been graded against WCAG 2.0 and meets AA requirements. This book contains print page numbers, reading order, structural navigation, table of contents, page list, landmarks, and all text for all images. Additionally, blank pages have been removed from the ebook while their page break labels have been left in for reasons of structural flow. White bullet. EPUB accessibility specification 1.0AA click to filter by. White bullet. Table of contents navigation click to filter by. Link, white bullet. Reading order click to filter by. Link, white bullet. Short alternative descriptions click to filter by. Link, white bullet. Print equivalent page numbering click to filter by. Link, white bullet. Language tagging provided click to filter by. Link, list end. Book description, heading level three. So there's much more detailed accessibility information for this book on CatDB. Not only does it confirm that image descriptions are provided, but it also tells me that it has a logical reading order. It has a accessible table of contents. And it even tells me which accessibility standards the book meets. So that leaves me feeling much more confident about purchasing this book. So if I keep going. A timely tale of friendship, ellipsis. Pass the synopsis. More information for dragging Mason County. Link, dragging Mason County by Curtis Campbell. Link, view on Kobo. Link, view on Amazon. Link, image and main. So there are links to view on Kobo and Amazon, which suggests to me that that's where CatDB is aware of these books being fully accessible. Now we already know that the Kobo for iOS app supports all text for images where Kobo for, or Kindle for iOS does not. So what we're going to do is we're going to open it up in Kobo. And normally this is where I would double tap that Kobo link and buy it, but to avoid having my credit card information displayed on my screen in a live recording, we're gonna return to the Kobo app and view the sample because I think that will demonstrate the point I wanna make next just as well as the full book would. App switcher, books, Kobo books, active. Kobo books, one of six in chapter. Here's the sample we've already downloaded. So I'm just gonna read a little bit and let's see how this goes. Serves a hilarious, heartwarming story of acceptance and m-dash. Okay, this is the introductory stuff. I don't need that. I'm gonna just get to the next page to get past this and get to the first chapter. Page two of 29. Draft serves a hilarious, heartwarming m-dash phrase. That's the same page. Page two of 29. Page two of two. Page two of two. Page two, serve. Okay, I can't turn the page that way. I'm gonna have to, where is it? Next page, button. Next page, two of six in chapter. Is a timely book about it. This gem of a novel is chock full of humor, heart, a worthy and important phrase. Read next page, two of six in chapter. Next page, button. Next page, three of six in chapter. Heading, a hilarious rock, Canada's drag rate. Three of six in chapter. Where's the top of this page? Is an m-dragging Mason County. I love Peters. Okay, I think you get the idea here. It's gonna get a little bit frustrated. So what's going on here is the Kobo app is not very well optimized for use with voiceover. What I was trying to do there was to flip the page with a gesture, but that is not supported in this app. I had to locate the next page button at the bottom of the screen. And then I had to swipe around and try to find the top of the next page to start reading from the beginning. That would get very irritating very quickly and just not conducive to enjoying a book. But unfortunately, because I bought this book from Kobo, I have to use the Kobo app to read it. And that's because of DRM or digital rights management. That is the technology that prevents all of us from illegally copying and sharing books that we bought, which is important, but it has a side effect of limiting how we can read our books, which for readers with accessibility needs means a little bit more than for some other situations. There are apps out there that are designed for blind people. They work really well with voiceover, but I can't just buy a book from Kobo or Kindle or Apple books for that matter and open it in those apps. I have to use the app for the bookstore that I've purchased the book from. Whereas if I had purchased this book from a DRM free source, I would be able to open the book in any app that I chose, perhaps one that's much more optimized for use with voiceover. And this is where services like Nels are so important. It's very legal source of DRM free books. If I got a book from Nels, I can open it in an app I'm comfortable with that works really well for me. Now, unfortunately, I was not able to find this particular book on Nels, but I downloaded a different book from the Nels website and I've loaded it into Voice Stream Reader, which is a popular app among blind readers. So I'm going to quickly open that up and demonstrate that. App switcher, book Kindle, act, Voice Stream, active. Voice Stream Reader, library, but I have a book open here and I can find the text. Heading, text, a nuanced, complex. And I can quickly swipe to turn the page. A nuanced, complex and highly original novel, equal parts harrowing and illuminating. Charles U, network conditions. Click here to sign up, already a subscriber? Provide your email again so we can register this ebook ideation. My transliteration from Cantonese and Japanese was done in an app. Okay, so I can keep flipping the page one at a time with a quick gesture. Or if I don't want to read like that, I can find the play button near the bottom. 1%. Navigation unit, pass. Play, select play button, adjustable. And press that. It's been over 30 years and so I am taking a chance that things have cooled down. You might not know much about what. And I could just let that read to me until I tell it to stop or until the book finishes. So that is much more convenient, is much more efficient to read that way than with the Kobo app, having to manually find the next page button every time and then finding the top of the next page. Now, one other alternative to DRM is a solution from EDR Lab called Redium LCP. And this is a DRM solution that protects against illegal copying without degrading the accessibility of an e-book and without requiring readers to sign up for all sorts of third party accounts to be able to read all their books. In Canada, Demark distributes e-books protected by Redium LCP. And you can learn more about Redium LCP by going to EDR Lab's website, www.edrlab.org, or I'm sure you could contact either EDR Lab or Demark who I'm sure would be happy to tell you more about Redium LCP. But I hope this presentation has given you a good understanding of the importance of accessibility metadata and the role it plays in being able to discover accessible e-books. The topic of DRM is also really important because while none of us are encouraging piracy, restricting accessibility also leads to lost sales and is not a solution. The solution is for publishers to produce accessible books, provide information about the accessibility of these books and for bookstores to pass that information along so that all readers will know if a book will meet their needs and will be able to read every book that they want to. Thank you.