Books Are for Everyone: On Accessible Publishing Standards

Accessibility (the inclusive practice of ensuring there are no barriers blocking equitable access to digital content) is getting more buzz than ever these days—and deservedly so. Adherence to accessibility standards can remove barriers to access for roughly 1.3 billion people with vision, hearing, motor, and learning impairments—about 16% of the world’s population. For publishers concerned about the potential costs of complying with accessible publishing, here are three arguments for why investing in accessibility is good for your business.

1. Reputation and sales

Accessible publishing is good for your overall brand recognition, and it can be a positive public relations story to boot. But more importantly, accessibility is necessary to ensure you are reaching all your potential readers. If your customers cannot readily find and read your work, you lose money—it’s as simple as that. And why would any publishing strategy disregard a chance to grow sales?

For every reader with a disability, you can assume there is a circle of friends and family who love them and want the best for them. Those potential customers, who track which publishers make their books discoverable and accessible to readers with disabilities, tend to favor them over their nonaccessible competitors—and often become champions for accessible products and services. Accessible publishing strengthens your brand across the board.

Conversely, you can lose money or incur fines for not delivering accessible publications and platforms, which can quickly undermine your sales goals. Many government-funded institutions are mandated to license resources that are fully accessible. And, starting next summer, the European Accessibility Act allows EU countries to impose fines on noncompliant publishers.

You can collaborate with your producers on how best to integrate accessibility standards into your publishing pipelines, whether upgrading compliance for new publications or remediating your backlist. And once you’ve invested in accessibility, be sure to embed the proper metadata into your EPUB and ONIX feeds, so those who need accessible content know that yours will work for them.

2. Spur new growth

Implementing accessibility standards can supercharge your publishing program. For example, accessibility compliance involves encoding images with descriptive metadata to support text-to-speech screen readers. But, adding descriptive image metadata benefits many other consumers and use cases, such as powering improved search, richer audio experiences, and integration with automated services like chatbots.

Think of accessibility in publishing like curb cuts, where the sidewalk slopes down to the street. Curb cuts were originally established to help wounded veterans but ended up helping so many more people, from parents pushing strollers to travelers pulling suitcases. Accessibility compliance is rich with such win-win scenarios that can result in new partnerships, stronger sales, and better products.

3. Futureproof your business

When a publisher brings its program in line with current accessibility standards, it is also investing in risk avoidance down the line. It is always cheaper to upgrade your workflows today than to one day find yourself in court, at which point you will still need to reach compliance, but under more scrutiny and at a higher cost.

Yes, it may seem like a heavy lift to reach full compliance with accessible publishing workflows. But your investments now will pay off in smaller, iterative maintenance releases over time. Each accessibility release will be smaller, faster, and cheaper. By implementing accessible-first publishing, you are sure to avoid higher costs in the future.

And, of course, it’s the right thing to do. Accessible publishing is a cornerstone of institutional and national initiatives to increase the inclusivity of our global information ecosystem. And while I’ve made the case that accessibility is good for business, it is also good for the community. Even if you’re not personally dealing with a disability now, it would be foolish to assume that you never will. Someday, you will almost certainly benefit from a publisher’s investment in accessibility. Why not pay it forward today?

Lettie Y. Conrad is an independent researcher and consultant and a member of Publishing Technology Partners.