7th European e-Accessibility Forum 18 March 2013 Cité des Sciences, Paris

1. 7th European e-Accessibility Forum18 March 2013Cité des Sciences, Paris Luc Audrain Hachette Livre Head of digitalization laudrain@hachette-livre.fr

2. Publishers activity • For books, publishers are at the origin of content • Contracts with authors • Editing process of author’s text • From authors to published books, editing skills are used to : • Edit text • Design pages with images and graphics • Produce PDF output to printer • Convert to digital version

3. Publishers digital activity • Digital version of books are built on edited contents whatever the process or the technology used to produce the ebook file. • Digital accessibility then depends directly on the editing tasks and on the good practices used at the very beginning of content creation.

4. Tools for content editing • Since the 80’s, text editing has been eased by text processors on personal computers • This has been the best and the worst things to occur for accessibility • Best as text is not anymore ink on paper but also character codes that a software can read aloud • Worst as ill use of text processors lead to good printing of non structured, non navigable, non semantic content, producing non accessible digital products!

5. Good practices are at hand • Text processors can : • Help separate content and presentation • Help structure documents • Give meaning to content • Enable navigation in content • Define language of text • Provide tools for Math • Good practices rely on the use of these available functions Inspired by http://www.diagramcenter.org/standards-and-practices/54-9-tips-for-creating-accessible-epub-3-files.html

6. Content and presentation separation • Content oriented typography • Text typography has no meaning in itself, it is derived from semantic • Typography reveals the meaning but it is not the meaning • Meaningful information is interoperable, accessible,not presentation • Practical issues • Use semantic character styles names in Word • Names of styles is more important than presentation • Example • Citation of a work title • In the middle of paragraph, title of a work is generally printed in italic, but better use a style named Work_Title than direct italic

7. Document hierarchy • Consider any content as a tree within a container (the document), root and hierarchy of branches : parts, chapters, sections, etc. • This hierarchy should be explicit in sections headings • Practical issues • Learn to use hierarchy tools at hand in text processors • Example • Tree panel in Word

8. Content meaning • Name any piece of information even if its presentation isn’t different from the rest of the text! • With semantically named styles, content structure is portable • Semantic in EPUB is then easy to declare • Practical issues • Use paragraph or character style names to identify any information • In editing process, do not present content as it will be printed but to reveal its meaning • Example : • Use symbolic decoration in text processor

9. Document navigation • The structure of the document is the foundation of navigation • Table of content is not a part of the document • It is the summary of its structure • Practical issues • Learn to build table of content from the structure of the document. Every text software has built in tools to extract a table of content from styles • Examples • Hierarchy level of paragraph styles • Indexes : use index marks in text • Index is not a part of the documents : it’s an extraction of document places ordered alphabetically • It can be generated from in-text indexing markup

10. Language of text • In a word processor text is always written in a language, be it the default one • Better be aware of the language used as you type • Practical issues • Language can be explicitly defined • On paragraphs styles globally • On characters styles for some words • Language is used for orthographic and grammar checking

11. Math tools • Math formulæ are objects full of meaning, not just signs and numbers • This meaning has to be explicit in the object • Practical issues • Use Math tools within word proccessors • These tools work in Math context • Math objects can be exported in MathML

12. Processes and standards • XML first production processes have considerably helped accessibility • Page composition built upon structured text • Book semantic vocabulary • Mandatory XML output • Correctness checked before archiving • Preserve paper page numbering • Unicode standard for characters • Automated eBook production • Conversion process from XML to HTML • Based on semantic tagging

13. Paper pages • Digital production processes must keep track of page breaks • Include this constraints in RFP for EPUB production • Practical issues • Know how this works in different EPUB readers • Check correctness in validating EPUBs • Example • iBooks shows pages numbers in EPUBs

14. So, where is the problem? • Year and years of training on : • Content and presentation separation • Structuration to add semantic and hierarchy to content • Courses have been given on : • Word processors advanced functions • Semantic styling • XML and its advantages • Seems to be inefficient in the end ! • Newcomers repeat ill use • Good practices never spread

15. Call for e-accessibility as a skill • Accessibility needs : • Match good practices for editorial content creation • Are available in every day publishing tools This is a call for a Copernic revolution in training • Training programs should be built from accessibility and digital needs : • It will benefit digital AND paper production • It will help better content repurpose on any direction • It will match accessibility needs in content