2.1 - The Accessibility Imperative

As the publishing industry focuses on inclusion, it has become clear that we can no longer postpone making our systems and publications accessible to the print disabled. Emerging international requirements will soon mandate this. The good news: many publishers, especially science publishers, are closer to accomplishing this than they realize. In this session, George Kerscher, Chief Innovations Officer of the DAISY Consortium and Senior Adviser for Global Literacy at Benetech, will show what a blind user encounters in consuming STM content, demonstrating some of the tools and technologies that help. Then Brad Turner, Vice President and General Manager of Global Education and Literacy at Benetech, will show some of services and technologies Benetech provides to disseminate accessible content and to make insufficiently content more accessible—while making the case that publications that are born digital should be born accessible: the standard products that publishers produce should be accessible from the start, enabling print disabled users to get the same publication, from the same sources, at the same cost, and at the same time as everybody else. Finally, Bill Kasdorf, Principal of Kasdorf & Associates, LLC, and the W3C Global Publishing Evangelist, will show how science publishers are closer than they realize to making this a reality, thanks to their typically well structured workflows and publications and the fact that many of the specifications and file types recommended for accessible publications are ones that they already use. Finally, Mr. Kerscher will wrap up by surveying laws and regulations that science publishers should be aware of. It is hoped that attendees will leave this session with a renewed commitment to accessible publishing, and with a better understanding of how close they may be to achieving that.