EPUB Accessibility Using InDesign

Course details

As digital books aren't constrained to the printed page, they're a great deal more malleable than traditional publications. Ebooks—which are essentially HTML and CSS in an EPUB wrapper—can be output or altered to meet the needs of readers who use assistive technology or have a situational disability. In this course, learn how to create cleaner, more accessible ebooks using Adobe InDesign. Instructor Laura Brady provides a throrough introduction to EPUB accessibility, going over key principles, techniques, and tools that can help you manipulate InDesign to boost a book's accessibility. Laura covers how to separate style and content, improve the navigation and structure of your content, and clearly describe images. Plus, learn about making pagelists and working with tools like the Ace accessibility checker.

Learning objectives
Why incorporating accessibility is important
Why style and content need to be separate
Tricking InDesign into exporting HTML5
Building a thorough TOC
Structure in trade and academic publishing
ARIA best practices
Handling images and image descriptions
Marking print-equivalent page breaks
Defining languages
Accessibility metadata
Testing with screen readers

Concepts

0. Introduction

01 - Why incorporating accessibility is important
02 - A business case for incorporating accessibility
03 - EPUB 3 vs. EPUB 2
04 - Introducing the big 10 of EPUB accessibility

1. Separate Style and Content

05 - Why style and content need to be separate
06 - Use HTML5 tags
07 - Tricking InDesign into exporting HTML5
08 - Edit all export tags
09 - Semantic HTML for character styles
10 - Subcategory - CSS

2. Navigation

11 - Why navigation is important
12 - Building a thorough TOC
13 - Build supplemental lists
14 - Build a full set of landmarks

3. Structure

15 - Structure as a main focus of accessibility checkers
16 - Structure in trade and academic publishing

4. Semantics and ARIA Roles

17 - Semantics, ARIA roles, and accessibility
18 - ARIA best practices
19 - Adding ARIA roles

5. Images

20 - Handling and avoiding text-as-image
21 - InDesign table export
22 - Using a table summary
23 - Using tables to control formatting

6. Image Descriptions

24 - Describing your images
25 - Keeping your images in your InDesign archive
26 - Describing images via hyperlink
27 - When not to describe an image
28 - Further notes on image descriptions

7. Pagelist

29 - Marking print-equivalent page breaks
30 - PageStaker
31 - EPUBOgrify script

8. Define Languages

32 - Language
33 - Language shifts

9. A11Y Metadata

34 - Required accessibility metadata
35 - Optional accessibility metadata

10. Tools

36 - Ace accessibility checker
37 - Sigil - Access-Aide plugin
38 - GreenLight
39 - Resources

Conclusion

40 - Testing
41 - Wrap up