[Athen] In the NEWS - Wiley incorporates alt text

Laurie Vasquez vasquez at sbcc.edu
Tue May 5 10:46:02 PDT 2015


http://exchanges.wiley.com/blog/2015/05/05/wiley-incorporates-alt-text-to-make-content-more-accessible/

Wiley incorporates alt text to make content more accessible0 Comments
<http://exchanges.wiley.com/blog/2015/05/05/wiley-incorporates-alt-text-to-make-content-more-accessible/#disqus_thread>

[image: Kimi Sugeno] <http://exchanges.wiley.com/blog/author/kimi-sugeno/>Kimi
Sugeno <http://exchanges.wiley.com/blog/author/kimi-sugeno/>
*Associate Director, Digital Book Services, Wiley*

Tags: accessibility <http://exchanges.wiley.com/blog/tag/accessibility/>, alt
text <http://exchanges.wiley.com/blog/tag/alt-text/>, digital news
<http://exchanges.wiley.com/blog/tag/digital-news/>, Ebooks
<http://exchanges.wiley.com/blog/tag/ebooks/>, industry news
<http://exchanges.wiley.com/blog/tag/industry-news/>, Kimi Sugeno
<http://exchanges.wiley.com/blog/tag/kimi-sugeno/>, Wiley news
<http://exchanges.wiley.com/blog/tag/wiley-news/>
------------------------------

Starting this month, Wiley will roll out a workflow to include alternative
text (alt text) in nearly all of our frontlist books. Wiley is one of the
first major publishers to include alt text this broadly.

Alt text is a description that provides contextual meaning to images and
illustrations. Non-visual browsers and screen readers express alt text to
readers when images cannot be accessed. This is an important criterion for
accessibility compliance.

Why alt text? As one of the major building blocks of accessibility, alt
text provides readers with contextual descriptions of images, enhancing
comprehension and providing a richer reading experience. By making our
products accessible, we ensure as wide an audience as possible can learn
from and enjoy them. Alt text also improves the versatility of products for
all readers; for instance, it can enable read-aloud for a user who prefers
to listen to a book.

Betsy Beaumon, President of Benetech <http://benetech.org/>, a non-profit
that develops new technologies to improve global literacy, said “Readers
accessing content through digital audio simply hear the word ‘image’ when
alt text is not provided, depriving them of information critical to
understanding the relevance of the image. By ensuring that alt text is
provided for all images, Wiley is showing great leadership in the growing
movement in the publishing industry to ensure that content that is born
digital is also ‘born accessible.’ This is a milestone achievement.”

We developed our alt text guidelines in consultation with industry
standards organizations–including Benetech’s DIAGRAM Center, DAISY,
International Digital Publishing Forum, and the World Wide Web
Consortium–to ensure best practices are current. Going forward, alt text
will be included in our upcoming XML, EPUB, Kindle files, and select online
courses, and will begin appearing in products later this year. All of this
will help ensure we are also better positioned to meet the needs of
adoption partners—institutions, both public and private.

When materials are correctly designed, developed, edited and enabled, users
of all abilities have equal access to information and functionality.

We’re proud to continue to improve and enrich our products so that they can
be enjoyed by as many readers as possible!
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