EPUB (Assistive Technologies): Getting Started

Below you will find video tutorials for completing accessibility evaluations of eTextbooks in EPUB format using Assistive Technologies (AT).  Click here to view the EPUB AT Manual as a PDF

  1. Getting Started
  2. Checklist Instructions
  3. Software Requirements
  4. Checkpoint 1: Accessibility Documentation
  5. Checkpoint 2 and 3: Text Access and Text Adjustment
  6. Checkpoint 4 and 5: Reading Layout and Reading Order
  7. Checkpoints 6 and 7: Structural Markup Navigation (Text, Lists, eReader) and Tables
  8. Checkpoint 8: Hyperlinks
  9. Checkpoint 9: Color and Contrast
  10. Checkpoint 10 and 11: Language and Images
  11. Checkpoints 12 and 13: Multimedia (Text Track, Transcript, Assistive Player) and Flickering
  12. Checkpoint 14: STEM (Markup and Notation)
  13. Checkpoint 15: Interactive Elements

Getting Started

 

Transcripts

Welcome, this tutorial will take you through the steps to perform an accessibility evaluation of ePub electronic textbooks using Assistive Technologies. Depending on the book content and amount of material in the book, novice raters should complete this book evaluation in approximately 3 hours, and expert raters should complete this book evaluation within 2.5-3 hours. STEM books, which stand for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, as well as books with more pages, images, or any sort of complex content, will typically take longer to evaluate.

Here is a list of the 15 checkpoints you will use to complete this evaluation. Each one will be discussed in depth throughout this tutorial. To access the text, contact the project manager to gain access to the textbook. Otherwise, visit Cool4Ed eTextbook Reviews site at www.cool4ed.org/review.html.To access the text from the Cool4Ed reviews page, you will need to select the desired title and format, and then select “go to material.”You will start by searching for the title of the desired textbook. In this example, we searched for the textbook entitled “Introductory Statistics”.After clicking on the link for our textbook, we are presented with this screen. From here, we can search for the preferred format, which for this tutorial, is “ePub” and then download the text. For this text, there are four different formats available to view or download. If it is available, EPUB3 is ideal for the evaluation, but if it is not available, we move down the list and search for the next available format. For this example, this format would be HTML or the “web view.” Download the textbook or open the link if it is available. This is an OpenStax text so ePub3 is available. To determine if there is an ePub format for OpenStax text, additional navigation is required. From the “web view” select “get this book”. On this page, click on the “Web View” link and it will take you to this page.From this page, you can click on the “Get this book” link and there will be an option to download the EPUB version of the text. You can use this method to find EPUB versions of books if they are not obviously available.