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.
@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.
@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 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.