Accessible Publishing

The practice of creating digital publications — including e-books, journals, and documents — that are accessible to people with disabilities from the point of creation rather than through after-the-fact remediation. Accessible publishing involves using semantic structure (headings, lists, tables), providing alternative text for images, ensuring reading order is logical, supporting text-to-speech and screen reader navigation, and including accessibility metadata. The concept of "born accessible" publishing emphasizes building accessibility into the production workflow so that all publications are inherently accessible. Key standards include EPUB 3, PDF/UA, and WCAG, with organizations like the DAISY Consortium and W3C Publishing Working Group advancing the field.