Before getting into the best practices themselves, there are two subjects that it would be a lapse for me to not talk about first. The digital famine is the first, as it will hopefully give you some real-world perspective on why accessibility matters.
You’re probably wondering what the famine is, since there are some impressive statistics emerging to show that the ebook revolution isn’t slowing down any time soon. Unfortunately, the numbers aren’t where it matters most yet if you believe in universal access to information. Sales are rising exponentially year over year, but the number of accessible ebooks available at the source is still small.
A commonly cited statistic in accessibility circles is that only about 5 percent of the books produced in any year are ever made available in an accessible format. Although there are signs that this rate is beginning to tick upward with more ebooks being produced, the overall percentage of books that become available in accessible formats still remains abysmally small. Fiction bestsellers are a bright spot, as they’ve been the first to receive the digital treatment, but there’s more to reading than just fiction.
Picture yourself in the situation where you’ll only ever have a spattering of books at your fingertips in any given subject area, and probably none in the more niche topics you delve into. It’s not a matter of finding another bookstore or reading application; those books just aren’t coming and there’s nothing you can do to change it. This dearth of content is what people refer to as the digital famine.
Not a pleasant thought, and it’s a reality that many people are forced to live right now; it’s only imaginary if you’re fortunate not to be affected. The ebook revolution holds out the promise of improvement, as mainstream publishing finds itself suddenly charting the same path as accessible producers, but there are still a number of factors that will contribute to this paltry number for some time to come, including:
New workflows haven’t yet emerged to facilitate the transition. Mass retail ebook production and consumption took many people by surprise, the author included, after earlier failed attempts. Tools and production systems are not optimized for high-quality multi-stream output production, making internal conversion of print to digital costly.
Accessible ebooks can become inaccessible after ingestion into a distribution channel, whether via reformatting to less feature-rich formats or for feature-reduced reading.
The inaccessibility of online bookstores themselves can hinder the ability to obtain ebooks.
Libraries for the blind and other republishers don’t have the resources to completely re-engineer the print-only books still being produced. And this model is a failing one for the long-term ideal of full content accessibility.
But, while depressing in the short term, none of these issues are insurmountable, and none are antithetical to producing good content. It’s only to say that there are interesting times ahead, and to reinforce that there remains much still to be done. The existence of EPUB 3 alone does not cure this famine.