 Hello everyone and welcome to the reading systems panel discussion. My name is Rianne and I am the Braille and accessibility testing coordinator at NELF and I'll be moderating the panel today. We're going to have about 30 minutes for the panel on reading systems and then we'll be talking about some of the key developments and challenges happening in this particular area. Before we begin, I'll let the panelists introduce themselves and in the interest of time, we'll just have you say your name and the organization or institutional affiliation that you're with and don't forget to everyone else that your full, all the full bios can be found on the accessibility publishing website. Lars, would you get us started and then we can go from there. So I'm Lars Wolden and I'm the product manager and founder and a lot of other stuff at Colibrio software and we developed the Colibrio reader framework, which is a framework that you can use to build accessible e-readers of pretty much any sort. So when we have a since day one, we've had a proper investment in accessibility, so it's baked into the very core of the reading system. So that's me. And Colleen. Hello everyone. I'm Cali Gainsworth. I'm the CEO of Legible. The pronouns are he, him as announced there. And I'm thrilled to be on this panel. In particular, Lars, it's good to see you. And I look forward to sharing all on this subject, which is also at my very heart as well. Thank you Joanna. And I'm Joanna Hunt. I lead the accessibility team for Amazon Kindle. Thank you and hi. Hi, I'm Kai. I work with Nels and do accessibility testing for different reading apps, along with other specialized projects. Perfect. Thanks so much everyone. One last note before we dive in, there will not be a designated Q&A period after this panel, after the 30 minutes have passed, I'll bring the conversation to a close and then we'll begin the working session, which is basically endless QA, which is exciting. All right, so let's dive in. And I won't maybe call in the first person and then you can open up for discussion from there. What advances and developments are happening with reading systems with respect to accessibility? Joanna, would you like to start? Sure, I'd be happy to. So thank you for, first of all, thank you guys for having me here. As I said, I work on the accessibility team for the Kindle organization and I mean there's lots of things that are going on. The thing for me that I find to be the coolest thing happening with reading systems today is that we are no longer simply focused on visual print disabilities, right? There's a whole lot of increasing focus on perceptual disabilities and what that means for reading systems because that's not as clear cut or as binary of a situation as blind low vision support where you need to support Braille, support screen readers. People with perceptual disabilities have a whole lot of opportunities to combine different bits and pieces of a particular system to create a unique environment that helps them read. I think there's lots of really cool advancements going on there. Just one example from the Kindle space that I'm excited to share with you guys today is a new tool that we released called the reading ruler. And effectively what it does is it replicates those physical reading strips that you would have in a classroom that are multicolored or have different levels of transparency that you can hold over a book and drag down the screen as you're reading and try to help you maintain your place, maintain focus and concentration. And we created a digital version of that that's embedded into the Kindle reading system. It's currently available on iOS coming soon to other reading applications for Kindle, but it grows with the dynamic content inside of a digital book. The text gets bigger, the ruler gets bigger. If the margins change, the ruler adjusts. If the line spacing changes, the ruler adjusts. So it really lets you create this integrated reading experience. And that's just one example of I think some of the cool things going on in reading systems all around, but specific to Kindle. But I'd love to hear from Lars and Kelly about what's going on in your reading systems as well. Well, go ahead, Lars, go ahead. If I could pick up here, I would say that that is really, it's so great that, and there's a lot of work to do, but that the accessibility technologies, the, such as the screen readers are starting to really work, be more stable. Again, this is for site impaired users. This platform has also become much, much more powerful over the over the years since we started working on this project, which is almost years now, which also means that we can do much more in line with, for example, color science and stuff to do what you said, Joanna that actually magically almost apply intelligent palettes and stuff to make sure that you have nice contrast and things. So the web platform has really done, you know, the advancements in the web platform has done magic. And so also the work of the W3C, I think it's super important that I feel a new commitment when it comes to the POP3 standard, which I think really was needed that we all rallied behind the POP3 standard again. And also the advancements when it comes, or when this beautiful work on the audiobook standard, for example, which is also going to be a huge thing for accessibility, I think. And also the work that me and Marisa is doing, mostly Marisa actually, when it comes to the sync media standard, which is also going to really improved synchronized narration for not only EPOP, but primarily perhaps in the beginning for audiobooks in EPOP. So, I mean, there's so much awesome things happening, right? We, with what's happened in the world, I mean, it's not been good, it's been really bad, but I'm an ADD person and my daughter has dyslexia and ADD, so I'm kind of happy in some way that this has a good thing that has come out of this is that what I and my daughter have lived through, you know, having problems with learning, that is going to change. I mean, we have so many schools and libraries that are using our system now, and it warms my heart to know that they will have proper learning tools where we had problems finding resources basically. So, yeah, that's it for me, I think. Kali, what has, I mean, this is your life, you're living this, what has been your experience? Sure. Thanks, Lars, it's so great to hear from you. I should have announced at the beginning when I introduced myself on the panel, I should have said I'm Kali, and I'm just glad to be here with Lars on the panel. So, anyways, I've been making ebooks for 25 years, and since, well, Kali, 1996, I suppose, and was when I first caught the bug, and then I caught the reading systems bug, not long after that actually. And I continuously thinking about accessibility from those perspectives, and in that experience, and one of the striking things about the ebook itself actually just as its own technology is it has the opportunity to in and of itself be a profoundly accessible document. And it's only the reading systems, in fact, which have historically not taken that possibility that many of us in their late 1990s and early 2000s saw as latent in the actual technology and itself. So in many ways, I think the most exciting thing happening in that ebook world is that it's not just that ebooks are starting now to be very seriously taken as born accessible. That's one thing. But a reading system or a reading platform, reading platforms are also now in more and more importantly, should be considered as born accessible so it's not just the born accessible ebook, and then everybody has to figure out how to use it. It's that the very reading system and the platform itself that hosts that book is actually born accessible and has accessibility built in to its very genetics by people who care as much about accessibility, as they do, for instance, about 20th century American capitalism. So we have to really embrace the fact that we can build an accessible platform, as well as an accessible ebook and I think it's also increasingly apparent that accessibility isn't just about providing accessibility to persons who have dyslexia, for instance. Color blindness and more but accessibility is a much broader and richer concept in that accessibility applies also to economic economically disadvantaged peoples and cultures. And when we talk about accessibility, how accessible are our ebooks for women girls people in Zaire, or Myanmar, or Russia, or indigenous communities in northern Canada, or Australia just how excess, what does accessibility mean there. And so when we really talk about accessible reading systems. We have to, we have to say that these systems now as a sine quote known as a basic expression of caring for other human beings who are differently placed than others. So we have to see that accessibility is the baseline for actually caring as reading systems for all the people who can have access who need to have access to books, economically disadvantaged people culturally disadvantaged people, women and girls in parts of the world who have not only no access to reading and to publishing, but actually are discouraged from that access as well, or have many barriers between them and that access so accessibility is an exciting time and reading systems because reading systems and platforms are starting to take the broader context of accessibility, as well as the absolute primal good baseline humanity of having accessibility with software and systems, and are starting to build that out. And in a way, catch up with what the internet, in fact, provided at the beginning in terms of accessibility, and what ebooks themselves just the pub itself has in terms of what it can offer for accessibility so these are exciting times. Thank you. Hi do you have anything to add. Yeah, I think very quickly from kind of a consumer perspective. I've definitely encountered a lot more discussion around accessibility and inclusion of various disabilities, and we're starting to see that with beta versions of apps and having that included in change note change notes and on their front facing websites. So I think just getting the word out there that accessibility is important and that it is part of the user experience in reading systems. I think we're starting to see a lot more of that and that's really awesome to see. So our next question is what do print disabled readers need out of their reading systems and look at two part question. So how are their needs being met or not met. I will start with you. I think some of the problems that we've been seeing. And so I'm going to kind of look at this. Not only as a consumer but also as an accessibility tester and testing at a professional level. And I think as a consumer we're still seeing interfaces that aren't necessarily standardized using native controls and proper labeling of buttons and that type of stuff. And some of that is fundamental to access. And that makes for really uncomfortable and frustrating experience when you have to kind of play the guessing game and click on every button to figure out what it does. And then I think at a professional level even though certainly there's more discussion about accessibility there's there's still kind of a knowledge gap of which ways to implement accessibility how best to do it. What are some of the techniques if it's if it's a web interface. Do developers use aria or do they stick with native HTML web elements. And, you know, some of these discussions that we've been having for several years. So I think that's kind of what I'm still seeing. Thank you. So, Joana, is there anyone else who wants to go to the next slide or Joana, do you have anything else to add. This is Joana. I mean, I would absolutely echo what I was saying about like the lack of consistent training and education being provided in computer science programs and design schools and in education programs that are setting up the next generation of builders. We've been talking about accessibility for a really long time, but we're still not expecting that level of knowledge in job postings we're not, we're still not expecting that to be included in as core curriculum in. Engineering and design and QA testing programs and part of what that's continuing to propagate is this idea that accessibility is something separate that it's something that can be done later it's something that can be prioritized differently. Instead of accessibility is about good quality code it's about good quality design and usability it's about sort of like key true definition of done and when we can shift the mindset a little bit we start to see in my experience we start to see a considerable amount more positive growth and positive success. Engineers are always going to say, but I don't have time to do something more. But if you can get them to see that this isn't a tax this isn't an additional step it's not something different it's just about fundamentals and thinking about, you know, good quality product. It really changes the conversation you no longer have to battle against business prioritizations and we'll ship it later and it's only a small number of users and we can fix it. We can fix it in the next release or all of the different things that that many companies or organizations here when it comes to prioritizing and investing in accessibility. And I think you're starting to see or at least I'm starting to see more companies try to push those cultures where it is just embedded into core development practices and it is just, you know, a key part of how we consider product to be complete. And that's exciting, I think to me, but I would, I would really like to see that in core education programs and even in the certification programs that exist for for engineers or things like, you know, different types of code academies where people are becoming engineers by taking a series of different classes and not going to a traditional school program for this so we have to look at all the different ways that that education is provided and how it can be embedded. But yeah, the, the disparate ways of accomplishing that create continues to create a lot of challenge for for teams trying to get it done right like there are 10 different ways to implement something and make it accessible and none of them are wrong. So which one do I choose and trying to help create clarity for that is important, I think. I've also been thinking a lot about enjoyability, which is something that I've, I don't think I coined it but I, I kind of used it when I, when I had a project. I built this accessibility reading system, which was a big experiment an ongoing experiment actually to just make a web reading system as accessible as possible basically from from. Yeah, so I did this together with the government for accessibility in Sweden. And, and I just tried to do all of my testing with my eyes closed, and that's not fair. I know that we don't have the same experience but or sorry, but and I, but I tried my best, and it was so frustrating and I mean, as, as I said, we don't have the same experience but I just realized that it's, it's, it was not an enjoyable experience for me. Like Danny said in the previous talk, it was, it seemed like there were so many hurdles to jump over I wasn't even like greeted by the app when I, when I open many of the web pages and so on it was just like our juice right and and that's not how I want an app I don't want if I build an app I want them to feel welcomed and, you know, like a big hug when they come into the app I want to But that's what I'm really, I really hope that I can, because I really, really want to build some kind of working group or something where we speak enjoy ability, or in, you know, the enjoyment of the user interface for for accessibility. So wouldn't that be nice. I just want to, to, to, to build, not just the technical knowledge, which is super important, you know, to get people knowledgeable about how to implement accessibility to make it usable. But usable is not enjoyable right it doesn't usable. We talk a lot about user experience when it comes to visual design and so on. I want to bring the same kind of level of enjoyability that you give with a nice user experience visual user experience to to the to the Narrated experience, for example, that would have been that would be and one day will be a beautiful thing I think I think I think so too. And, you know, again, I really want to go back to the accessibility as being something that really needs to be platforms themselves need to be born accessible I want to say that again. And, you know, accessibility. And by that I mean the very company structure itself should have accessibility as its core and terms of well how do we make money on the platform. What's our business model. What's our who is our demographics all these decisions that companies and executive teams have to make at the very beginning. They include accessibility in every one of those decisions, i.e. their business model is take accessibility as a plank of its success. What does that actually do to the platform and to the publishing industry. I'm a I'm a single dad of three kids I've been raising them alone for most of their lives and dinner, making dinner every day for them has it there's there's like nothing sexy or interesting about it it's just the last thing that I want to do for my kids on a daily basis. I do it on a daily basis, and we're all sitting around the table, all of us together at the table eating in a shared meal. There is nothing more transformative for my family than that time together. I see accessibility in the same way. Accessibility is about ensuring that every human being can sit at the table and share in the meal as a family. Accessibility is so much is not a sexy topic. It's not something that, you know, investors and financiers and tie flying executives are like accessibility that's like really cool. Code is exciting as being 4pm in the day and realizing I have to make dinner for my kids in two hours for many of these people and that's fine, but the transformative experience of building an accessibility into our products but also into the very platform at the time that we're living before a single line of code is written, I think, is the transformative thing and I'm among the few people on earth that probably number amount like we're like the Hobbits I feel like on earth, that really believe very strongly that the reading system itself is an incredible engine for transforming and changing the world for good. And if accessibility is at the heart of that reading system from the beginning and part of the entire business structure of the company going forward, then that transformational impact of the reading system can't be underestimated, because not only are we bringing the allowing, can you imagine allowing like this is crazy that we have to think about this but the brilliance and the presence and the minds and the insights and the, the kind of vision that people who don't have accessibility to reading and publishing can bring to the world to the table. And that includes print persons with print challenges and it includes people with economic challenges geographic challenges and more as I said, accessibility is an incredibly important and broad term with a transformational heart. I feel like I should have been like a mic drop at the end of that one. Great question and answers everyone. Thank you. So we have three questions left so we'll try and hurry them along here without, you know, losing content. How are standards and features supported and I feel like we've kind of already addressed that but if anyone has anything quick to add. I think one one thing that I think it's important for us to think about to kind of thread a couple of these conversations together is there's a there's a lot of talk about sort of achieving standards leaning into understanding you know web content accessibility guidelines or ePub accessibility standards or whatever the next you know, an industry standard is that could try to put some frame and some shape around accessibility. And then you take this thread of the conversation that Lars started which I whole whole heartedly agree with around enjoyment and creating these moments of delight in the reading experience and trying to connect the dots it to some extent for people who say well I just love reading I love the I love the feel of a book I love the experience of a book I love the adventure that a book brings and how do we bring that into into digital environments. Certainly technology gives us lots of opportunities for ways to think about that, but, and then this may be a controversial statement in my opinion, we don't, if all we think about is the standards. And you know when you when you think about standards you get your brain into this compliance mindset where you have to meet the standard. And the standards often need to be very rigid so that they can apply to lots of different types of environments and they're almost anathema in some cases to that idea of enjoyment and instead of having it like an industry that's focused on trying to make sure that these these these digital experiences are enjoyable, but balancing that against what we have this this sort of legislative requirement to meet a certain set of standards because that's what tells us that we've created an experience everyone can use. It creates this tension, not always good tension around the idea of creating an enjoyable experience the idea of embedding something like accessibility into the core of business models into the core of company practices. And that's still checking a box that says, yep, we can prove we did that. And so, I don't know for me I always think about standards as like one input to thinking about what it is that we need to build, and I lean and try to guide the teams that that I work with to use them as such to make them as an input, make sure we understand the expectation of that because they're a really good foundation for knowing, technically, what does it mean to make sure that someone who uses some other specific type of assistive technology or has some other specific need to understand how they interact with our technology. But then, but then think about, well what's going to make it fun, what's going to make it delightful what's going to make it easy and enjoyable to use and that's what we how we define like the bar, right and and that's, I think, I don't know, I'm all for standards, but standards are not enough. It's the it's the point of entry and then it's it's what we build on top of that, I think. Yeah, just that too many people stop there, right because that's what we talk about. There's so much conversation about the standard and not enough conversation about beyond the standard that everybody kind of stops at that low bar of entry. I always tell people that standards are really the starting point. And, you know, if we're talking about the full user experience and enjoy ability. You know, we have to go beyond accessibility standards and look at, you know, the user experience and get input from people with disabilities. So, you know, for example, there's obviously requirement for image descriptions, but could we also look at conveying images and other content and with other senses to make it more enjoyable and multi sensory. So, you know, I think going beyond standards is really vital. I mean, I have this idea and I've had it since a couple of years back that we should allow, we should have an extra layer on top of our publications which is community driven. This from the beginning I call it accessibility metadata but that, or sorry, I call it accessibility annotations, but that's not really what I meant, but that's the key thing would be that you could crowdsource image descriptions or like annotations that would add sound effects to, if there was a specific bird on the page, for example, you could, somebody could add the proper sound of that bird, for example, or what not. And this could be like layers on top of a book like marginalia, perhaps in an old book, you know, where you find other people's experiences embedded within the book. That I'm, I, if somebody wants to do this, I'm all for it so. So, we have a standard for this it's called web annotations so let's do it. That's what I'm saying. Yes, I think that it takes a village, and it would be super awesome to, to help publishers in some way, and most of all have readers actually by letting, letting readers enhance the experience of other fellow readers and publish to accessibility is absolutely critical on the publishing side. However, accessibility is just as important on the publishing side as well. How many voices have been underprivileged or looked over, or being inaccessible to the world's ability to read them, because they haven't had an accessible technological speaking to actually publishing. And I want to just return to what you and Joanna have been saying about enjoyability I think that it can't. I think that's a really profound observation that that you made enjoyability is is like the is actually the goal I mean why shouldn't it be enjoyable. And not just rudimentary and musical, but again I, I can't. I think that having having the communities that are most touched by or accessibility technology, or to the accessibility built into technology having their voices at the table and even guiding the discussions of course is is another critical component as well. It's just so classic for that for those voices to be thought about but not actually included or privileged at the beginning of the conversation, you know, and again I want to underscore all the way back in the earliest things as a platform is forming and building. Are those voices part of the discussion, or is it just people talking about the business case for something are the accessible accessibility enjoy the enjoyable accessible world being brought in and I think that increasingly we must do that and advocate for that as well, and and support the accessibility community as advocates in every way we possibly can. Thank you so much panelists for this excellent discussion we are have reached the end of the panel topics for for this part and we're going to head right into the working groups. Thank you so much to everyone and we'll give you a couple minutes to carry on we're finding new new area thanks again. Thank you everyone. Thank you. Thank you.