As part of APACE, six Accessibility Pilot Projects were developed to explore innovative methods for producing accessible publications.

These Pilots brought together publishers and accessibility experts, fostering a meaningful collaboration between two professional groups whose combined expertise is essential to advancing accessibility in publishing. In fact, one of the project’s main objectives is to strengthen this bidirectional dialogue. This exchange plays a key role within the framework established by the European Accessibility Act (EAA), as it supports publishers in creating fully accessible e-books.

The Pilots aim to experiment with new workflows, tools, and collaborative models capable of making even complex publications fully accessible. The publications involved included educational and academic textbooks, illustrated books, and children’s titles.

Through these practical experiments, the Pilots have generated valuable insights into the challenges and opportunities of implementing accessibility across different publishing sectors. They have also contributed to capacity building, supporting publishers in adapting their production and distribution processes to meet the requirements of the EAA.

More about the Pilots

The outcomes of the Accessibility Pilot Projects are collected in two key documents:

• Pilot Projects Report: a comprehensive overview of the process, findings, and results of the six national pilot projects;
• Checklist for data visualizing elements and tables: a checklist providing guidelines to ensure that data visualizations and tables in publications are accessible and comply with WCAG criteria. The guidelines were created in collaboration with an academic publisher, but they can be used for data visualization beyond academic or scientific publications.

Both are available for download on the dedicated page of the European Accessibility Directory.

To present their key findings, an Ask the Expert session will be held on November 26th, featuring some of the APACE project partners who took part in their development.

The partners of APACE are Fondazione LIA (project coordinator), the Italian Publishers Association (AIE), Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels e.V. (BOEV), Sdruzhenie Asostsiatsia Blagarska Kniga – Bulgarian Book Association (ABK), Stichting Dedicon, Accessibility Library Celia, Lietuvos audiosensorine biblioteka – Lithuanian Audiosensory Library (formerly Lietuvos akluju biblioteka (LAB)).