For the first time, Fondazione LIA will participate in the conference of the California State University Northridge dedicated to assistive technologies for disabilities. For over 38 years, Northridge’s Center on Disabilities has sponsored the conference, providing a platform for researchers, practitioners, educators, exhibitors and more from around the world, to engage with each other and share knowledge, innovations and best practices to promote inclusion for all.

Within the rich program of the 39th CSUN Assistive Technology Conference, which will be held from March 18th to 22th, two are LIA’s interventions focusing on topics resulting from its work and expertise. The first session is a technical presentation and it is perfect for who wants to know more about LIA’accessibility certification process of e-books. The second speech will provide professionals with an overview of what the European Accessibility Act will mean for the publishing sector around the world.

“Accessibility QA for eBooks: Are Automatic Tools Enough?”

Not all the accessibility requirements can be automatically checked in a programmatic way. The session will explore the most common errors that cannot be identified by automatic tools and propose a methodology to ensure a high level of quality of publications.

Info

March 20th – 4:20 PM PST

Grand AB

Description

In 2014 Fondazione LIA was the first organisation worldwide to set up a Quality Assurance programme to check ebook accessibility title-by-title and its catalogue of accessible titles features today more than 35.000 Born Accessible EPUBs. The QA process rely on automatic tools widely adopted by the industry (e.g. EPUBCheck and Ace by DAISY) and tools internally developed by LIA, integrated with manual control following checklists specifically created by for accessible puslishing. With this experience we will present the problems we find most often in the ebooks we check for accessibility and identify best-practices that content producers should adopt to improve the accessibility of their publications.

A presentation by Gregorio Pellegrino, Chief Accessibility Officer at Fondazione LIA.

More info on the session: www.csun.edu/cod/conference/sessions/index.php/public/presentations/view/1777

“European Accessibility Act: Game Changer for Accessible Books”

The European Accessibility Act will be a game changer for digital publishing worldwide as it establishes accessibility requirements for e-books, reading systems and for those wishing to distribute in Europe. Starting in 2025, what can end users expect?

Info

March 21st – 1:20 PM PST

Platinum 2

Description

In Europe there is a surge of interest towards accessibility in the publishing sector, due to the new legislative scenario coming into force in June 2025. The European Accessibility Act has implications not only in the 27 EU countries but worldwide. This presentation will offer a comprehensive look at the advances European industry is making in all its sectors (trade, educational, academic) as well as revealing the challenges that remain. Publishing companies are working together with disability organizations, and we will present a roundup of the most promising collaboration projects in the field. Finally, we will offer insights about what to expect (good and bad) for readers and educators in Europe, the US and beyond.

A presentation by Elisa Molinari, Project Manager at Fondazione LIA, and Richard Orme, Chief Executive Officer of DAISY Consortium.

More info on the session: www.csun.edu/cod/conference/sessions/index.php/public/presentations/view/1774