Developing a Culture of Accessibility

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Developing a Culture of Accessibility

Accessibility has been the buzzword in publishing over the last several years as the industry embraces the need to make its content available to all readers. We at KGL have previously highlighted innovations in accessibility in K-12 learning and also potential hazards of not making scholarly content accessible.

As we look to the future, most specifically 2025 when the requirements of the European Accessibility Act will be enforced, we want to focus on the important steps and perhaps changes in corporate culture publishers need to take in order to make their content available for all readers.

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Accessibility Fast Becoming an Essential Pillar of Scholarly Publishing

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Accessibility Fast Becoming an Essential Pillar of Scholarly Publishing

Two years ago, we (as Cenveo at the time) hosted a panel discussion at the SSP Annual Meeting, which brought the subject of accessibility to the center stage and helped shine a spotlight on the importance of making content accessible to readers with disabilities, such as learning difficulties and visual impairments. To mark Global Accessibility Awareness Day (#GAAD), we take a look at how this landscape is evolving and how scholarly publishers are now actively improving access to academic research.

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Designing Your User Experience Strategy, Part 3 (The Creative Process)

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Designing Your User Experience Strategy, Part 3 (The Creative Process)

When designing your publishing platform, there are many factors to consider to deliver an optimal user experience. It’s critical to establish a user-first driven process.

As discussed in parts 1 and 2, it is imperative that your web publishing platform be designed with accessibility, responsiveness, and consistency for all users and devices. Publisher websites are often built using templates and components to help present content in a familiar pattern that users recognize and can easily access. But when designing the “skin” for these experiences, maintain your stylistic uniqueness to strengthen your brand presence. Your brand’s attributes and voice must be visually communicated.

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Designing Your User Experience Strategy, Part 2 (Accessibility Improves Experience)

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Designing Your User Experience Strategy, Part 2 (Accessibility Improves Experience)

Website accessibility is not a new topic. In fact, it’s been a factor since 2010 when the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) published standards that digital technology and information must be accessible to all people. At that point, most companies did not think that responsibility for website accessibility applied to them, or that they were required to address it unless they were receiving federal funds/grants. Additionally, the general perception was that creating accessible websites was more costly and entailed a lengthier process to implement. Not surprisingly, the ROI to include accessibility as part of the web design process was not considered valuable enough to be a default priority.

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Designing Your User Experience Strategy: Part 1

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Designing Your User Experience Strategy: Part 1

Tracey Greene is the Chief Creative Director at Digital Artisans, KGL PubFactory’s lead design partner. In this three-part blog post series, Tracey shares valuable insights into maximizing discoverability and accessibility when creating your digital content platform.

Your website platform should be available to every person on any device. The following are critical considerations in a “mobile-first” world for maximizing discoverability and accessibility when creating the optimal user experience for journeys across all of your digital content.

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Digital Equality for Distance Learning

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Digital Equality for Distance Learning

Accessible content ensures that students with disabilities don’t fall behind during the Great Shutdown

Here at KGL, we have long championed accessibility in publishing. Ensuring that your books, journals, digital products, websites and other content are either remediated or “born accessible” is essential to readers with disabilities. Many publishers by now appreciate that the same technologies and guidelines that improve access to materials for people with visual or hearing impairments, limited mobility, perceptual and cognitive differences can also open opportunities to better reach and serve all users. But if there has ever been a time to acknowledge the consequences of digital equality, it is the great experiment in distance learning of 2020.

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Accessibility as a Civil Right

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Accessibility as a Civil Right

In October, the United States Supreme Court handed down an order stating that it would not take up a plea from Domino’s pizza chain to reverse a decision in the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals stating that the company must make its website accessible to people with disabilities. This lawsuit is one of many that have been brought in the last two years against fashion designers, art galleries, gyms, grocery stores, among other companies in a variety of industries, which host websites featuring content which is inaccessible to the visually impaired.

Under Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act, any business with at least 15 full-time employees which operates for 20 or more weeks every year must provide accommodations for those with disabilities. As the marketplace is going from a physical to a digital one and more content—from news to research—is being read more online than off, it has become vital for those hosting the content to adapt to accessible content.

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W3C Publishing Summit 2017

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W3C Publishing Summit 2017

The first-ever W3C Publishing Summit took place in San Francisco, November 9 to 10, to discuss how web technologies are shaping publishing today, tomorrow, and beyond. Publishing and the web interact in innumerable ways. The Open Web Platform and its technologies have become essential to how content is created, developed, enhanced, discovered, disseminated, and consumed online and offline.

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Accessibility: Because the Internet is Blind

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Accessibility: Because the Internet is Blind

Like the visually impaired, the Internet cannot “see” content the way a sighted human being does. It can only discover relevant content via searchable text and metadata. When publishers take the right steps to make content accessible, they also make it more discoverable.

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Accessibility for Journal Publishers

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Accessibility for Journal Publishers

The terms “access” and “scholarly journals” are often linked to Open Access publishing. Less often discussed—but still very important—are issues and challenges of making journal content accessible to the visually, cognitively, or otherwise impaired.

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