An Enriched ePub eBook for Screen Reader Users

Abstract

Abstract. Our study aims at obtaining ePub accessibility for all, including screen reader users. Since an ePub document is made up of several (X)HTML files, we analysed and worked with those (X)HTML tags that affect the blind user's experience in the reading. As a case study we developed an "enriched" ePub book which applies technical solutions (i.e. tags and attributes) with the purpose to overcome the accessibility and usability issues observed when interacting via screen reader. In this work we present the results collected through an online survey conducted with 25 users to evaluate the "enriched" ePub compared with the original PDF format in terms of accessibility and usability. Positive responses about the proposed solutions emerged from the survey: the easy access to the table of content, to the images, to the text and also the ease of navigation. In short, 88 % of the users preferred the ePub format instead of the PDF. This confirms that quite simple technical solutions can really improve the reading experience for not only visually impaired people. The results from the survey also showed accessibility issues and limitations of the screen readers and eBook reader software which still exist.

Identifying the Requirements of Visually Impaired Users for Accessible Mobile E-book Applications

“…Nevertheless, the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) claimed that many e-books do not meet the needs of the visually impaired. Equitable access to digital resources for the visually impaired is still limited and complicated [11], [12], [13]. Therefore, there is a need to deeply understand and gather the requirements of the visually impaired before attempting to design any mobile applications for them.…”

“…Visually impaired consumers of electronic devices depend on the ability of assistive technologies to interact well with digital interfaces [32]. However, these assistive technologies will not function correctly if the format of the electronic content is not accessible [33], [11], [34], [13], [16], [35]. Additionally, disabled users may only be able to use websites that are designed to be compatible with assistive technologies [36].…”

“…Besides the ability to access electronic contents, the user should also be able to use the interfaces to access information with minimum effort [32]. It is very clear from the available literature on the usability and accessibility of e-resources that visually impaired users are still not qualified to use the existing resources due to lack of proper guidance and accessibility issues [11], [9], [13], [37].…”

Educación abierta inclusiva: diseño instruccional de un libro electrónico

“…Los alumnos con problemas visuales respondieron de manera correcta a la interfaz de diseño mínimo y a los gráficos. Sin embargo, a pesar de los esfuerzos realizados, el acceso a los recursos digitales para personas con discapacidad visual sigue siendo limitado (Bartalesi & Leporini, 2015;Khowaja & Nishat, 2019).…”