Last year, the European Accessibility Act was passed. FEP – Federation of European Publishers and IPA – International Publishers Association, in Frankfurter Buchmesse professional program, organise the event “European Accessibility Act: a chance for publishers. All you need to know from international accessibility experts” to highlight the opportunities of the law for publishers and feature statements. The event is organised in collaboration with Aldus Up, the European book fairs network, and with the support of Fondazione LIA.

Dates

Friday, October 16

11:30 – 12.30 h CEST

Topics

Any publisher selling their e-books in Europe in 2025 and all the actors of the e-publishing supply chain will need to respect the European Accessibility Act . This panel gathers international accessibility experts who will tell you everything you need to know about the act and how to be compliant. The European Commission and the World Intellectual Property Organisation will present the Act before industry experts will answer questions like: why is the Act so important? what makes a publication accessible? How can be sure that an e-book is accessible? What platforms can I use? What e-readers can I use?

Chaired by Anne Bergman-Tahon (FEP).

• Opening by Hugo Setzer IPA President and Peter Kraus vom Cleff FEP President;
• Europe adopted the Accessibility Act. What is in it? – Inmaculada Placencia-Porrero (European Commission);
• Beyond Europe, how does the EAA combine with the Marrakesh Treaty? – Monica Halil Lövblad, (ABC/WIPO);
• The experience of a visually impaired person in searching, acessing and reading a publication – a video presentation by Fondazione LIA;
• The accessibility journey of a digital publication:
  •  What makes a publication accessible? The workflow- Cristina Mussinelli (Fondazione LIA);
  • How I can know that an e-book is accessible? The metadata – Luc Audrain;
  • How can I access a digital publication platform. The web interface – Paolo Casarini (Il Mulino);
  • How can I read? The reading device and app – Wendy Reid (Rakuten Kobo);
• Why is EAA so important? – Thomas Kahlisch (European Blind Union).

Speakers

Luc Audrain

Expert on e-book accessibility. Audrain was Head of digitalization of Hachette Livres.

Anne Bergman-Tahon

Director of Federation of European Publishers since 2004. She has a background in medieval history and copyright law from Brussels University and King’s College London.

Paolo Casarini

CTO / IT Director at Società editrice Il Mulino; software project leader, architect and developer in a wide variety of business applications.

Peter Kraus vom Cleff

President of the Federation of European Publishers.

Monica Halil Lövblad

Headof ABC-Accessible Books Consortium. Head of WIPO-World Intellectual Property Organization.

Thomas Kahlisch

University of Leipzig. He studied computer science at the universities of Dresden and Karlsruhe. He wrote PhD thesis on human computer interaction.

Cristina Mussinelli

Secretary General of the LIA Foundation. Mussinelli is also AIE consultant for digital publishing, member of the Board of EDRLab, co-chair of the W3C Digital Publishing Business Group, member of the Daisy Consortium and invited expert of the section ISO OT UNI / CT 014 / SC 04 “Automation and documentation”.

Inmaculada Placencia-Porrero 

Senior Expert in the Unit Disability and Inclusion at the European Commission.

Wendy Reid

Accessibility and Publishing Standards Lead at Rakuten Kobo. She is also the Chair of the EPUB Working Group at the W3C, Chair of the Publishing Working Group, and Editor of the Audiobooks specification.

Hugo Setzer 

President of the International Publishers Association, where he has also served on its Executive Committee from 2004 to 2010 and from 2013 to present.

To participate

The event will be streamed on www.buchmesse.de/B2Bevents and is free of charge. In order to access the stream digital, visitors require merely an account with MyBookFair (free-of-charge): services.book-fair.com/login. Pre-registration is not required.

The event is organized by

in collaboration with

The summit was made possible thanks to the countribution of Direzione generale Educazione, ricerca e istituti culturali del Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali e per il turismo