Heya Fedi,
I have a question for you all regarding accessibility specifically when talking about E-Books.
Does one here have to use screenreaders or such stuff in order enjoy a book?
How is accessibility with an E-Book?
Are there any challenges disabled persons stumble upon when trying to read an E-Book?
Is there something I would need to look out for that makes an E-Book especially accessible?
I would like to gain some perspective on this in order to do some research on the topic regarding a especially light novel E-Books.
Please share your thoughts and testamonials with me.
Boosts are of course welcomed as well.
💀
@stefan
I'm a bit confused about what exactly you're asking. An ebook is, after all, just a specially formatted text document. It's just a file. Any accessibility features that a disabled person might need comes from the app or device you use to open that file.
The only thing I can think of, is that if the ebook in question also features some images, what would be useful is that the images are accompanied by a description of is in it. This way, if a disabled person relies on text-to-speech (screenreader) to "read" the book, it can also read them the description of the image.
@alyx@gameliberty.club Epubs are in and of themselves fairly usable for disabled people since they support reflow of text and stuff.
I can imagine a really big font could break some. Thats also an interesting angle to look at. But I guess there will be some papercuts with that option especially.
@stefan
Don't know if there's a format worthy of the name ebook that doesn't support reflow. I don't think pdfs qualify as ebooks tbh. Anyone that does, or that releases ebooks as pdfs, is a madman in my view.
@alyx@gameliberty.club there are a few exeptions. E-books are more often than pdfs when it is really important to have a fixed layout. I know from sciency stuff where they seem to like pdf.
Also there manga and comics to consider which also dont support reflow since they are really a bunch of images. But for everything else missing adjustability of fonts and stuff is inexcusable. Never saw that being an Issue with novels though.
@alyx@gameliberty.club I am talking specifically what can make or break accessability for an E-Book (or more specifically an Epub for that matter)
I did some reading on the topic by now. It seems like DRM on the Epub might become an issue for some stuff.
Also I am looking for stuff that one as an author could use when making an E-Book in order to have it be accessable. Like do and dont's maybe.
Does that clarify it a bit?
all I want to get at is, where are the problems with accessability and what can one do as author and maybe a reader as well to overcome those challenges.
@stefan
I don't think there's gonna be that much you can control as an author. Things that impact reading accessibility a lot, like font style and size, are things that will be controlled by the apps or devices the readers will use. I believe you can package a custom font in your ebook, and set a custom size for the fonts, but that may or may not be respected by the app/device that is being used to read the ebook.
But keep in mind, that if you do try to set a custom font/size, and a disabled person already has their app/device set up in a certain way, and then it tries to respect what you set in your ebook, it may break this person's settings. So in effect you could be harming them, instead of helping, forcing them to fiddle with their settings again for your ebook.
@alyx@gameliberty.club so basic thing to keep it as reflowable and customizable for the reader as possible.
It does now at least make more sense to me why big publishers strictly seperate images from text in Epubs going even as far as putting images in their own htmls within the book.
@stefan
Something else that maybe you can account for in an ebook file, is to assume that the reader will use a very large font, to make reading easier, and to try to adjust the way you format the text, to make sure thinks are still legible.
For example, maybe you have a bullet point list, and you need to make sure the reader can still easily understand and follow the list, even with a very big font.