For the 2024 edition of the Frankfurter Buchmesse (October 16th – 20th), Fondazione LIA organized some events to promote the theme of accessibility in publishing, with the collaboration of international partners and in the framework of the APACE project.

In particular, the professional meeting “The Accessibility Era. Are you ready for it?” explored the current state of European publishing less than a year before the European Directive on accessibility requirements for products and services (European Accessibility Act) comes into force on June 28, 2025. The publishing industry and organizations supporting people with visual disabilities are getting ready for this appointment stepping up efforts to produce and distribute accessible digital publications. But how?

Answering this question were the professionals involved at the seminar through various presentations. Kicking off the discussion was Elisa Molinari (Project Manager, Fondazione LIA), who presented the results of APACE’s survey on the state of accessibility in publishing in Europe. The survey is an in-depth analysis of accessibility practices adopted by European publishers across various market segments (fiction, non-fiction, academic and professional, educational) in 17 countries and it is available on the new website developed within the project.

Alessandra Porcelli (New Business Director, Mondadori Group) then presented the case study of the Mondadori Educational Area and, in particular, the effort to adapt its accessible services to international accessibility standards, through a project of several steps of skills acquisition and workflow adaptation that foresees the achievement of this goal in three years.

Finally, the presentation by Simon Holt (Senior Product Manager, Content Accessibility, Elsevier) was focused the approach of a publishing house that wants to produce accessible services: accessibility should be an ongoing process involving an entire dedicated team. He then emphasized that producing accessible ebooks is only a small part of the equation and that a publisher must also consider all the other steps in the publishing ecosystem, starting with e-commerce.

The video of the seminar

The seminar is organized by Fondazione LIA in collaboration with the Frankfurter Buchmesse, the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels, the Federation of European Publishers, the International Publishers Association, in the framework of APACE, co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.