EPUB (Assistive Technologies): Checkpoints 2 and 3

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

Checkpoints 2 and 3: Text Access and Text Adjustment 

Transcript

The next checkpoint is text access. The text of the digital resource should be available to assistive technology that allows the user to enable text-to-speech (TTS) functionality. For this checkpoint we will use the assistive technology, NVDA that we downloaded earlier. Keep in mind that when using NVDA, NumLock should be turned off. To evaluate this checkpoint, try using only the keyboard. You can find a list of the keyboard shortcuts by clicking on this link. To evaluate this checkpoint, first you need to open the eBook with Adobe Acrobat and activate NVDA by pressing control, alt, and N on the keyboard. Use NVDA to read from the top of the page using numpad + and use ctrl to stop. Make sure your speaker is on. The text content should be read in a manner that is clear and understandable to the listener. If elements of the text are not read adequately, take that into account when scoring this checkpoint. Base your score off of the amount of passing material. For this checkpoint, you will sample 10% of the total number of pages. If the book has 150 pages in total, a total of 15 pages will be checked. However, the Excel checklist will decide these values for you in the amount of material column. If 70% or more pages were correctly read and completed by NVDA, then the eBook passes for this checkpoint. If less than 70% passes by skipping random segments, then the checkpoint would fail with the corresponding ranking. The additional information will include the number of pages that passed for text to speech. The next sentence will be which pages were used for the checkpoint. Then why the pages passed or failed will be explained in the next sentence. The detail column will have the same exact information from the additional information column plus how Adobe Acrobat and NVDA were used to access and evaluate this text. 

The third checkpoint, text size adjustment, is to see if the text allows the user to adjust the font size from the range of small to ultra large. You are not checking for reflow in this checkpoint, only for the adjustment of the text size. If you can adjust the text size from small to ultra large but some text is cut off, it will still pass for this checkpoint because you are not checking for reflow of the text. To check text size adjustment, First, open the ePub file with Adobe Digital Editions. Use the AA button in the top right corner or press control plus to increase the font size or control minus for decrease. If 70% or more of the assigned pages pass then the text was still readable when the text increases to 200% and decreases to 50%. This checkpoint fails when the text is not readable. In the additional information include how many pages pass for text size adjustment and which pages passed. In the detail column include how many pages pass, which pages passed, why pages passed or failed, and how Adobe Digital Editions was used to access and evaluate this text. The third checkpoint is text adjustment for color. This will be marked n/a in the pass/fail column of your Excel sheet and skip the ranking 1-10. In the additional information and details column explain that this checkpoint is non-applicable because assistive technologies are required. Here is an example of checkpoint 3b.