Accessibility metadata for ebooks

Retailers increasingly expect every EPUB to carry accessibility details. These details say whether your book works with a screen reader and whether its text can be resized. Every ebook edition in Pubblish has four fields for this:

  • the level you are claiming
  • who stands behind the claim
  • the date you last checked
  • a summary for readers

You can leave them blank. Pubblish then records the accessibility as not assessed. It does not guess.

Why retailers ask

Shops show these details to readers who are deciding whether a book will suit them. Each shop handles it differently:

  • Kobo requires accessibility information in every new metadata file it receives, even when the answer is that the book is not accessible.
  • Google Play Books shows your book’s accessibility as “unspecified” when nothing is supplied. The book stays on sale.
  • Amazon KDP asks one accessibility question during title setup. It puts the answer on your book’s detail page. Unanswered, it reads “I don’t know”.
  • Apple Books asks you to tick the accessibility features your book has.
  • IngramSpark collects nothing.

The European Accessibility Act is the reason. It asks publishers who sell ebooks in the EU to state their accessibility in their metadata. Publishers with fewer than ten staff and turnover under €2 million are exempt. None of the shops above sets a size threshold. Declare whether or not you qualify.

Setting your accessibility claim

  1. Open the title, click Edit title, then click the Editions tab. See Editions for how editions work in general.
  2. Open the ebook edition. Click the pencil Edit button on its row. To create one instead, click Full edition form below the table, then choose Ebook as the Format.
  3. Scroll to the Accessibility section in the panel.
  4. Fill in what you know. On a saved edition, each field saves as you leave it.

The Accessibility section opens on its own once the Format is Ebook. For a paperback, audiobook or map, the section stays closed and its fields are grayed out.

Field What it does
Accessibility conformance The level you are claiming: WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) 2.0, 2.1 or 2.2, at Level A, AA or AAA. Or EU micro-enterprise exemption if you qualify. Leave it as Not assessed if you have not checked.
Accessibility certified by Who stands behind the claim. You can certify it yourself. Leave it blank and Pubblish uses your imprint’s name (the publishing name on your books).
Accessibility assessment date The date you last checked this edition. The picker does not offer a date after today.
Accessibility summary A sentence or two for readers: what screen readers can do with the book, and whether images have alt text. Up to 2,000 characters. Leave it blank and Pubblish writes one from the file it builds.

What Pubblish writes into the EPUB it builds

When you build an EPUB through Conversions, Pubblish writes two things into the file.

  1. Your conformance claim, exactly as you set it. If you chose EU micro-enterprise exemption, the file records the exemption instead of a WCAG level.
  2. A description of what the finished file does. Pubblish reads it from the file it has just built, not from anything you typed. It covers:
  3. how the book can be read
  4. whether its images carry descriptions
  5. whether the book holds anything hazardous, such as flashing images

The Accessibility summary is the one part you write. Fill it in and Pubblish puts your wording into the file as it stands. Leave it blank and Pubblish writes the summary from the file it built.

The details inside an EPUB go wherever the file goes: Amazon KDP, IngramSpark, Draft2Digital and the rest. For those channels, they are the only accessibility statement your book carries.

Checking an EPUB you uploaded

Pubblish checks every EPUB in your workspace.

  1. Open the file from a title’s Files tab, or from Files in the left navigation.
  2. Click the file’s name on its card.
  3. Read the Checks section of the panel that opens.

Cards with warnings or problems also carry a small warning icon.

Three of the checks are about accessibility:

  • a file with no accessibility details at all
  • a file with some accessibility details but not all
  • a file with images that have no description

When Pubblish builds the book from your manuscript, it fills in the full set. See How Files works for how files are organized.

The alt-text warning

Claim a WCAG level, then build the EPUB through Conversions. If the generated file has an image with no description, the conversion tells you.

  1. Open Conversions under Files in the left navigation.
  2. Click View on the conversion’s row.
  3. Read the Conversion warnings section.

The warning names the claim you made and counts the images.

Pubblish never changes your claim. The claim goes into the file as you set it. The warning says only that the file does not match the claim yet.

To fix it:

  1. In your manuscript, describe each image using Word’s own Alt Text feature.
  2. Upload the edited manuscript.
  3. Start a New conversion from it.

The new file carries your descriptions.

Convert again does not help here. It reuses the text Pubblish already extracted from your manuscript and never reads the file again. It picks up only changes to your settings and catalog data.