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<?xml version="1.1" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?>
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:epub="http://www.idpf.org/2007/ops" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
<head>
<title>Chapter 1. Introduction</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="css/epub.css" />
</head>
<body>
<section class="chapter" title="Chapter 1. Introduction" epub:type="chapter" id="introduction">
<h2 class="title">Chapter 1. Introduction</h2>
<p>If you’re expecting a run-of-the-mill best practices manual, be aware that there’s an
ulterior message that will be running through this one. While the primary goal is
certainly to give you the information you need to create accessible EPUB 3
publications, it also seeks to address the question of why you need to pay attention
to the quality of your data, and how accessible data and general good data practices
are more tightly entwined than you might think.</p>
<p>Accessibility is not a feel-good consideration that can be deferred to republishers
to fill in for you as you focus on print and quick-and-dirty ebooks, but a content
imperative vital to your survival in the digital future, as I’ll take the odd detour
from the planned route to point out. Your data matters, not just its presentation,
and the more you see the value in it the more sense it will make to build in
accessibility from the ground up.</p>
<p>It’s a common misconception, for example, that any kind of data is accessible data,
and that assistive technologies like screen readers work magic and absolve you of
paying attention to what’s going on “under the hood,” so to speak. Getting the
message out early that this is not the case is essential to making EPUB more than
just a minimally accessible format and preventing past mistakes from being
perpetuated.</p>
<p>It’s unfortunately too easy when moving from a visual medium like print to treat
digital content as nothing more than yet another display medium, however. The simple
path is to graft what you know onto what you don’t. But it’s that thinking that
perpetuates the inaccessibility of content. Everything starts with the source. All
the bells and whistles your reading system can do for you to assist in rendering and
playback ultimately rely on the value of the content underneath and the ability to
make sense of it.</p>
<p>Treat your data as a second-class citizen and eventually you’ll be recognized as a
second-class publisher.</p>
<p>But try and turn your brain off to the word accessibility as you read this guide and
focus instead on the need to create rich, flexible, and versatile content that can
make the reading experience better for everyone.</p>
<p>Inaccessible content typically means you’re settling for the least value you can get,
so get ready to think bigger.</p>
<section class="sect1" title="The Digital Famine">
<h2 class="title" id="_the_digital_famine">The Digital Famine</h2>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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
<em>digital famine</em>.</p>
<p>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:</p>
<ul class="itemizedlist">
<li class="listitem"><p> 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. </p></li>
<li class="listitem"><p> Accessible ebooks can become inaccessible after
ingestion into a distribution channel, whether via reformatting to less
feature-rich formats or for feature-reduced reading. </p></li>
<li class="listitem"><p> The inaccessibility of online bookstores themselves can
hinder the ability to obtain ebooks. </p></li>
<li class="listitem"><p> 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. </p></li>
</ul>
<p>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.</p>
</section>
</section>
</body>
</html>