Next June, the EU will require that digital content sold in its single market conforms with regulations in place to ensure accessibility and discovery of accessible content. The enabling laws and market-based regulations have been in place for some time, with a deadline of mid-2025 for conformance by any publisher selling content in the EU.
A number of organizations have been working to ensure that useful guidelines and specifications are in place ahead of the 2025 deadline. Chief among these is the W3C, which released EPUB Accessibility 1.1:
Conformance and Discoverability Requirements for EPUB publications earlier this year. The public comment period ends in mid-November, and the entire book publishing supply chain has been encouraged to review and comment on the proposed requirements.
Beyond the W3C, organizations that include DAISY, LIA Fondazione, EDItEUR, and Benetech have contributed to the proposed requirements. Updates include the use of common language to describe accessibility features as well as greater alignment between the terminology that the W3C uses in EPUB and the accessibility features as describe using ONIX.
These updated features will allow publishers and the book industry supply chain to better describe accessible content in metadata as well as in the eBook files they sell. Front-list titles slated for release in mid-2025 will be among the first books sold under the new requirements, so the proposed requirements are immediately relevant to any publisher selling digital books in Europe.
BISG will continue to offer content in the first half of 2025 to help publishers prepared for the EU requirements. An immediate first step would be to review and comment on the proposed requirements, the content of which will help the book industry meet the laws in place next June.
W3C Seeks Comments on Proposed Accessibility Requirements
Next June, the EU will require that digital content sold in its single market conforms with regulations in place to ensure accessibility and discovery of accessible content. The enabling laws and market-based regulations have been in place for some time, with a deadline of mid-2025 for conformance by any publisher selling content in the EU.
A number of organizations have been working to ensure that useful guidelines and specifications are in place ahead of the 2025 deadline. Chief among these is the W3C, which released EPUB Accessibility 1.1:
Conformance and Discoverability Requirements for EPUB publications earlier this year. The public comment period ends in mid-November, and the entire book publishing supply chain has been encouraged to review and comment on the proposed requirements.
Beyond the W3C, organizations that include DAISY, LIA Fondazione, EDItEUR, and Benetech have contributed to the proposed requirements. Updates include the use of common language to describe accessibility features as well as greater alignment between the terminology that the W3C uses in EPUB and the accessibility features as describe using ONIX.
These updated features will allow publishers and the book industry supply chain to better describe accessible content in metadata as well as in the eBook files they sell. Front-list titles slated for release in mid-2025 will be among the first books sold under the new requirements, so the proposed requirements are immediately relevant to any publisher selling digital books in Europe.
BISG will continue to offer content in the first half of 2025 to help publishers prepared for the EU requirements. An immediate first step would be to review and comment on the proposed requirements, the content of which will help the book industry meet the laws in place next June.
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