BIC Brunch: European Accessibility Act, Digital Content - EPUB and PDF

Join us in this, the third session of our brand-new series of webinars dedicated to Accessibility, which we’ve put together with the 2025 European Accessibility Act (EAA) firmly in mind.
This event follows on from our incredibly well received launch session in July 2024 which took us back to the basics with a look at the legalities.
In the second session (September) we explored the EAA requirements in light of what they mean for digital/eBooks both in terms of the data contained within the ePub file and also the metadata created and distributed throughout the book industry supply chain via ONIX.
So having already looked at the legalities and the metadata, October’s session saw our expert speakers guide us through the accessibility requirements of the content of a digital book. We looked at ePubs and PDFs, and took a quick tour of W3C’s User Experience Guide as we look to understand what it means for an ebook to be truly accessible, what is required by the EAA, the common pitfalls to avoid, and what can we be doing better. We also heard first-hand about the impact of accessible content on readers with accessibility requirements.
Host:
Karina Urquhart, Executive Director, BIC
Speakers:
Simon Mellins, Independent Digital Publishing Consultant and Accessibility Specialist, plus co-founder and working group member of the Publisher's Accessibility Action Group (PAAG)
Paul Porter, Technology Officer, RNIB
James Yanchak, Production Technologies Manager, Taylor & Francis
Audience
This recording will be of interest to those concerned with complying with the EU Accessibility Act, particularly when it comes to the creation of content for digital books/ebooks.
The EU Accessibility Act will have a far-reaching impact on the book industry supply chain and so this session will be of interest to anyone working in the book publishing world including publishers, vendors, and in particular, content creators.