 This is Patrick Bouchard. I'm an accessibility tester for Nels and I'll be demonstrating reading an e-book using an iPhone with the voiceover screen reader. To read books on my iPhone, I often like to use Apple's Books app. I like it because it has a simple and accessible interface. It also synchronizes well with the Books app on other Apple devices. So for this demo Nels has put together a sample e-book containing lots of accessible features. That are designed to work well with screen readers. And just to show off the kind of accessibility features that can be present in an e-book to improve the experience. The first page is the cover page. And we're going to let voiceover read this. Cover, accessible publishing summit 2023 by an NELS. The cover is mainly yellow with a large white badge shape in the center. The book's title is in the white space. Image, actions available. It's not very helpful so it tells me the title that's in the image. It tells me a bit about the image looks like. And that's important because my eyes can't see what the image looks like and a screen reader can't tell for itself what the image looks like. Some of them now have artificial intelligence features that will try to discern what's in the image but it's never as good as good alternative text being provided and inserted into the data. So that's important here. Even though knowing what the image looks like is mostly out of precariousity's sake there are other images in books that may be illustrating important points. And all text needs to be provided to make sure that everyone knows what's being conveyed by that image. You also heard actions available at the end of that. That just means that I can swipe up or down to access functions in this case like bookmarking the page. That has little to do with the content. That's a feature of Apple's Books app. They've added to make that more convenient for voiceover user. They're going to flip the page. Thanks again. It's a title page. No rights reserved. Okay, we're not going to read the entirety of that page. Like most casual readers won't be doing that. But it is there for people who need it and it is all in text. So voiceover can read all of the reference information. So for people who may need that it is available and accessible to all readers. And that's the dedication page simply to all readers. If there is a title thing that it's a dedication is not being read which is an important point that I'm going to come back to a few times in this demonstration. Apple's Books app works well with some accessibility features and not as well with others. And I point that out not to discourage publishers from using those features but rather to encourage them because the more people using them the more companies like Apple will realize oh readers using screen readers aren't getting everything that's in this book. Some of it's still inaccessible to them and the more books using it the more important it'll be for them to fix it. If very few are using these features they may think oh we don't need to fix this fairly anyone's using it. The more people using it the more important it's still placed on it. So that's why I bring that up. There'll be several examples in this and there may be some more specialized solutions available which handle some of these better. But I want to demonstrate using this app because it's what I like for casual reading and I think it's what a lot of people will be using because it's a stock Apple app and they'll have trust in it. But with that aside we're going to skip to the next page. A novel like chapter heading. Action. Right so we get to the first chapter and you hear heading. So that's useful because it lets me navigate by heading if I would like to do that. Makes navigation to find a specific section that much easier for a voice over user. But for now we're just going to read. Forget what you think you know. Vampires exist. Action. Actions available. We left in pretty good time and came after nightfall to Klausenburg. Here I stopped for the night at the hotel Royal. I had for dinner or rather supper a chicken done up some way with red pepper which was very good but thirsty. M-e-m, get recipe for Mina. I asked the waiter and he said it was called paprika handle and that as it was a national dish I should be able to get it anywhere along the Carpathians. I found my smattering of German very useful here. Indeed, I don't know how I should be able to get on without it. Actions available. And why did I do this before having dinner instead of after? But whatever, that's not important. An important thing is that it reads the text, the chapter, read the quotation to start and then started reading the contents of the chapter itself. A section with a block quote, heading. Action. So we have another heading, section with a block quote and I believe I can demonstrate. Characters for headings. Chapter 1, a novel like chapter, heading. Yeah, so I can quickly and easily jump back up to that top heading if I want to do that. So I can navigate from heading to heading but we're going to get back to... a section with a block quote, heading. Actions available. I will now share a letter I received from my love. 17, Chatham Street. Wednesday, the 10th of May. My dearest. I must say you tax me very unfairly with being a bad correspondent. I wrote to you twice since we parted and your last letter was only your second. Besides, I have nothing to tell you. There is really nothing to interest you. I must stop. Good night. Bless me in your prayers and, Mina, pray for my happiness. Lucy. Action. So that's the letter that was written and it was contained in a block quote. Now this is something that voiceover doesn't recognize. I mean it reads the text just fine. I don't miss that. But it doesn't identify that it's a block quote. With some screen readers say if you're using JAWS or NVDA on Windows in a web browser they will identify the start and end of a block quote. The voiceover is not doing that here. So that's one thing that could be improved just to clarify to voiceovers that this is a quotation. But the text is red which is definitely better than it being skipped completely. Page 5 of 12. Lucy. A section with a context break. Heading. He displayed a skill in the choice of ground. In the use of light troops and in securing his own supplies whilst he cut off those of the enemy which guard a Kaia himself. God of war. Might have envied. Dr. Heraclius Gloss was a very learned man. Although This was a section with a context break. That is another thing that voiceover doesn't explicitly recognize. There's a thought between the two bits of text which may be the context break but it's just recognized as a separate paragraph. Which again for just for reading is okay but if a context break has more important meaning it's not being conveyed. A section with and without a language shift. Heading. Action. So this one demonstrates a language shift so that is including text of another language within your content. And this is important because it affects how voiceover will speak it as you will hear. With a marked up language shift. Heading. The French expression. Avoir l'esprit de l'escalier. Refers to an inability to think of a witty comeback or any sort of intelligence response until it's too late to be of any use. Actions of. I know I've experienced that many times but again the importance you can hear the voice change to a French voice to speak the phrase because this has been marked up correctly it's identified in the content that that phrase is French as opposed to the English which is the rest of the content. The voiceover knows to speak it with a French voice to pronounce French words correctly. Without a marked up language shift. Heading. The French expression. Avoir l'esprit de l'escalier. Refers to an inability to think of a witty comeback or any sort of intelligence response. Actions available. Now I don't speak French and even I know that wasn't pronounced correctly at least involved because it's not the same as the French voice itself pronounced it but even without that I would have known that it's not right and that's what happens when it is not marked up properly. The screen reader doesn't know that these are actually French words it's trying to pronounce so it will continue with the English voice with the English pronunciation rules and it will mess them up. Page 6 of 12. The French expression of our chapter to a more scholarly chapter. Heading. I once asked a young dissertation writer whether her suddenly grayed hair was due to ill health or personal tragedy. She answered it was the footnotes. Horizontal bar. Joanna Russ. How to suppress women's writing. How to suppress women's writing. Section with less. Heading. So again we had a new chapter with an intro and again there's probably a block quote in there or something that VoiceOver isn't identifying. I mean it reads the text just fine so it's a minor minor issue I'd say but for books that are more complex where these things matter it could be a potential issue. So let's say for really academic textbooks where these features are used a lot more than in novels this could be a problem for VoiceOver users attempting to read. But again it's important to still use these features because there may be other apps which may handle them better and it will encourage Apple and other software companies to improve them and implement proper support. The practical man may just be observed at this point that the world of single vision is the only world he knows that it appears to him to be actions available. I missed the heading for the second time but this is a section with lists available for organizing information steps related bits of information like that so there are two ways to do it bullet real bullet solid bullet and self consistent and that is an unordered list so that has a bullet character before each separate them and VoiceOver knows to treat each as its own item so that it's easy to scroll through they're separated it doesn't read them all together like it would if they were just a sentence in a paragraph or the second way to do a list is coming up and it's a numbered list plainly then it is the first business of the charlatan 2 one create if he can some feeling of dissatisfaction with the world within which the practical man has always lived and acted and two to suggest something of its fragmentary and subjective character actions of that's an ordered list you hear the numbers ahead of each item instead of bullet characters and that indicates that there's a specific order that these things should be done and the numbers make it clear to a VoiceOver user what the order is again they're separated so you swipe through separately or it'll pause between reading each one if you're reading from the top to the bottom of the page all at once images section heading regular image so here we have more images and this will get into more in depth descriptions one day when he was strolling in the square at Balancon he saw a large wooden hut from which came the sound of terrible howling while on the platform the mountabank incoherently invited the crowd to come and see the terrible apache tamer tomahawk or rumbling thunder a drawing of a shirtless white man he reaches upwards with one arm against a starry night sky text reads prez paradastra actions of so again we hear the image with its description very helpful figure one illustration from Finland in the 19th century and it's titled as well for our convenience Finland in the 19th century image with link long description heading figure two map from the map that changed the world a map of the caimerton and link lay stoke railway in north somerset click the link below to navigate to long description image figure two map from the map that changed the world the map that changed the world long description for figure two link actions of so we have here is a map and the description for that is going to be a little bit longer than is advisable to put into an alternative text attribute so what they've done is they've written it separately in an appendix provided a brief description here and then provided a link to jump to the long description so if we double tap that it will long disc appendix long disc jump to the page and we can read the long description here figure two map from the map that changed the world heading the map that changed the world heading a map of the caimerton and link lay stoke railway in north somerset the legend identifies two tracks the s and dj t rely and the g w lie as well as the kennett and avon canal action okay we're not going to read the entirety of it but you get the idea you're able to have descriptions that are several paragraphs long in this way and people who don't want to read it don't have to click the link we do have much more room to explain what's on the map we have all readers a good idea of what it shows the g w in the northeast quadrant return to figure two link action and then this is important as well they provide a link to return to where we were returned images section heading regular so it brings us right back to the page we were on before we clicked that link so then we can return and keep reading regular image one long description the doctor immediate page 8 of 12 actions available section with a footnote and an end note heading footnote section heading before this superb specimen of man in his last trans migration heraclius gloss pale with joy stood lost in profound meditation star end note section heading then having executed a fantastic somersault absolutely incompatible with the dignity of a man the forehand gentleman gave way to the most unseemly hilarity at the site of the doctor's beard one so this section deals with end notes and footnotes which is something that does not work correctly with voiceover you heard at the end of the first one it said star which is an asterisk character and at the end of the second paragraph it said one which is supposed to be a link with the number one leading to end note number one but it doesn't identify it as a link and there's no way for me as a voiceover user to isolate that and tap it to activate it this doesn't work correctly it tells me there's footnote number one but unlike the image description I can't jump to it and read it so that's something Apple needs to improve section with a table heading actions available so here's a table and tables are great for organizing information with relationships or charts anything like that we have an example chart here section with it name of emperor name of emperor length of reign in years name of emperor length of reign in years name of emperor length of reign in years cause of death and this is unfortunate you can hear it's repeating the name of emperor and length of reign in years voiceover is not handling this correctly which is disappointing because it handles tables great in web browsers and other apps so that tells me it's the implementation in the books app that isn't quite compatible it shouldn't be reading all the left word columns when I focus on a row or to the right it shouldn't be doing that to be reading each on its own and it does this and not just the header row either Tiberius, Tiberius 22 Tiberius 22 Possible assassination on its own that doesn't make a lot of sense because A it's not reading the headers with each like if it had read name of emperor Tiberius which is what it's supposed to do that would be much more helpful and then it should be reading length of reign in years 22 that's what it should be doing it shouldn't be repeating Tiberius and then even 22 it shouldn't be repeating each of the previous columns data in the further right columns so again this is a voice over issue it's not so much a content issue it's a voice over in books not implementing this properly section with the sidebar heading one day when he was strolling in the square at Balancon he saw a large wooden hut from which came the sound of terrible howling while on the platform the mountabank incoherently invited the crowd to come and see the terrible Apache tamer tomahawk or rumbling thunder a sidebar heading this is the text of the sidebar and note heading one link one two okay so let's unpack some of that there's a sidebar which again voice over reads but doesn't necessarily identify it I mean it only does so because there's a heading saying this is a sidebar but that is not voice over recognizing the sidebar so again this is something that would be a bit more compatibility just it's just really saying sidebar and possibly providing more options to like say skip sidebars or whatever for people who want to do that that's not here so just reading them as plain text which is better than ignoring them completely but again for more academic text that could be a bit of a problem this is the text of end note heading okay so here's our end note from before one link one to be fair the beard was weird actions available one link and in this case actions one moose monkey one is a link that I can click here and more like tapping I suppose click is a computer anyway you can activate the link and it brings me back to the page where it was referenced from so I can click that way but I can't do it going forward so that's still an issue page 10 page 10 of 12 one two appendix long and we've come back to the appendix where the image description is so that is the end of the demo the only remaining page is the we'll show you about the author heading about the author page plain text the national network for equitable library service NNELS is a repository of content owned and sustained by Canadian public libraries and NNELS we don't need to read the entire thing it's text that voiceover handles very well the demo for reading ebooks on iOS iPhone I hope that was helpful whether you're a reader a publisher to get an idea of how the Apple Books app works and how accessibility features are handled again some well some not so well and hopefully more work is done to make sure that the ones that are handled not so well are done better as we know they can be because other screen readers and apps do handle those in other situations even voiceover in web browsers often handle some of those better than it is in books if that's done then Apple Books could be a useful app for screen reader users to read all sorts of books whether fiction or textbooks from basic textbooks to highly advanced that is important and I hope Apple takes that to heart and makes improvements but in the meantime publishers will be aware of how to make books accessible to as many people as possible and the challenges we may still encounter and we can all work together to improve the state of reading