Page 7 - Whitepaper: The European Accessibility Act and What it Means for the Global Publishing Industry

Straive | The European Accessibility Act and What it Means for the Global Publishing Industry 7

• Formats to create accessible e-books

The three most extensively used e-book
production formats in the publishing industry MOBI PDF
are EPUB, Mobi, and PDF.

Until recently, the production of accessible
e-books was reliant on specialist formats like the
DAISY format. EPUB is now the most accessible
format for producing mainstream born accessible
publications, owing to the most recent version EPUB
of the EPUB format, version 3, which was built
with the full assistance of the DAISY Consortium.
EPUB 3, which was initially established in 2011
by the International Digital Publishing Forum
(IDPF), is now maintained by the World Wide
Web Consortium (W3C), after IDPF merged in
2017 to become « Publishing@W3C », the
largest non-profit organization supporting
Web standards.

Since the EPUB format is built on the Open Web Platform, which is a collection of
technologies used to develop websites (including HTML, CSS, and XML), it includes all the
accessibility capabilities that were previously present in the DAISY format.

EPUB is the most extensively used format for the production and dissemination of e-books on
a global scale. All aggregators and distributors accept this format.

In accordance with the EAA standards of Annex I, the EPUB format provides the capabilities
needed for a person with a print disability. It can also be helpful for people with other
disabilities and for the general public. I ts compatibility enables it to be supported by both
general reading tools and technology intended for use by people with disabilities. Additionally,
books in EPUB format can be instantly vocalized, have their display modified, expanded,
and transformed to electronic braille. The information can also be completely graphically
customized to the users' needs, and it can include sophisticated semantic tagging (such as
ARIA roles) for blind readers.

The work done on a global scale by organizations like the W3C, the Daisy consortium, and
EDRLab provides the technical foundation for the creation of accessible e-books for works
with a clear layout and minimal illustrations.

Amazon used a format called MOBI. Interestingly, the company used to take in e-books in
EPUB format but distribute them in MOBI. However, the company informed the publishing
industry in June 2021 that it will no longer accept MOBI, PRC, or AZK files from publishers for
reflowable e-books. Instead, it recommended that publishers use the EPUB format.