Context and backgroundAccording to the European Blind Union, there are estimated to be over 30 million blind and partially sighted persons in geographical Europe, with an average of 1 in 30 Europeans experiencing sight loss. The average unemployment rate of blind and partially sighted persons of working age is over 75 percent. In addition, there are millions of people who are not able to adequately use printed materials, including those with dyslexia, motor disabilities and cognitive disabilities. Collectively, these groups are often referred to as the “print impaired”.According to the World Blind Union only 5% of published works, such as books and educational materials, are currently available in accessible formats. The move to digital books and supports, however, has the potential to greatly increase access to reading for the print impaired. Recognising this, the European Accessibility Act, which was voted into parliament on the 13 March 2019, has ruled that all European publishers must make their digital books accessible.Member states are waking up to the challenges and opportunities brought about by inclusive digital publishing. Some countries have begun to address this question through public policy and sectoral advocacy, but even the most mature environments lack detailed instructional material geared towards all stakeholders in the publication chain. Publishers struggle to recruit professionals with the necessary know-how as there is a critical skills gap in this field and expertise is a scarce resource. With digital publishing very much in its embryonic phase, the experts need to work together cross-border to exchange knowledge and best practices and share these with current and future professionals working in the publication ecosystem.Objectives - Build and streamline key accessibility competences and skills that are currently missing from professions involved in the production of digital publications from a wide variety of sectors. - Raise and standardise the overall quality of digital content that is produced within the new legislative context, particularly in preparation for the transnational exchange of accessible digital publications. - Build Strategic Partnerships that support innovation through intensive dissemination and exploitation activities around best practice within the publishing ecosystem. - Raise awareness around the need for accessible digital publications. - Provide practical and effective learning materials for publishers and producers of digital publications, so they can make content accessible and implement accessibility requirements into their workflows. - Increase the number and quality of titles and inclusive materials available to people with print disabilities.ParticipantsThe SIDPT strategic partnership brings together BrailleNet (FR), Dedicon (NL) and Johannes Kepler Universität Linz (AU). All three organisations have a long involvement and recognised expertise in the field of digital accessibility and the development of tools and methodologies to support learning in this area. All three organisations have a strong multiplier role in their respective countries.Description of activitiesThe partnership will design, develop, implement and deliver a detailed learning resource to support the publishing ecosystem in the creation and delivery of accessible publications. It will be available in four languages: English, French, Dutch and German. Dissemination activities will serve to raise awareness around accessibility requirements, share the project results with as wide an audience as possible and ensure that end-users from the target groups inform the specification of the resource and participate in its evaluation.MethodologyBroadly speaking, the project will be broken down into three phases: research and planning, build and content development and user testing and deployment. Quality control mechanisms and review and sign-off processes will be defined early on in the project to ensure that project objectives continue to be met throughout the project lifecycle.Running in parallel to these activities which are focused on the development of the learning resource will be a number of dissemination and exploitation activities that ensure that the results are delivered to and adopted by target audiences.ResultsThe results of the SIDPT strategic partnership will be available online under an open license and can be used both as an Open Educational Resource (OER) and in the context of formal curricular.

Access of people with disabilities to online information and services has become a critical requirement for an inclusive society as described in the Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities (UNCRPD). Many digital resources are still not accessible to people with disabilities. The rising demand for accessibility competence means that accessibility evaluation skills must become part of the standard IT skill set.The COMPARE strategic partnership between DIAS (DE), BrailleNet (FR) and Funka (SE) was set up to support and strengthen the accessibility competence both of skilled evaluators and non-expert IT staff. All three partner organisations have a long involvement and high expertise in the field of accessibility and in the development of tools and methodologies for accessibility evaluation. All three are important multipliers in their respective country. The project has built and tested an innovative learning resource that enables its users to look at real web content examples and related accessibility ratings by different experts / peers across Europe The partnership has developed and implemented the COMPARE repository of web content cases with accessibility ratings (PAR Repository) – see https://compare.accessiweb.org . The system is based on Wikimedia installation and has been populated with cases, accessibility assessments, and user testing results. The focus is on interactive widgets that are often hard to evaluate. Evaluators and developers can investigate the cases and ratings when learning to evaluate the accessibility of real web content. They can also validate one's own assessments against the judgments of peers. Accessibility experts and organisations of people with disabilities across Europe have contributed cases, assessments and user testing results. A second major project output is a Learning and Exploration Module called Access & Use. It features best practices and many video examples of user testing showing key accessibility requirements of interactive widgets. It links to related cases in the repository for exploration – see https://accessuse.eu . Access & Use can be deployed in existing training contexts, but also be used as part of future accessibility curricula. It shows eight key interactive web components, and interfaces with cases in the PAR repository where example cases can be explored further. The concept has been validated by other accessibility experts across Europe that are core stakeholders and contributors to the repository.The COMPARE resources offer a hands-on learning and exploration approach to accessibility where the focus is on real, complex web content and associated accessibility ratings. User testing results have added a third dimension. The impact of the project has been an improvement of the accessibility evaluation competence of experts and learners across Europe. With the PAR repository, experts have learned by comparing the different assessments of peers which validate (or at times contradict) their own judgments. They have also made use of the hands-on examples of user testing and the problems these videos demonstrate in https://access.use.eu in their familiarization and training activities. The International Association of Accessibility Professionals (IAAP) has signaled that it will use the COMPARE resources in their training activities. Access & use had also become a part of the EAE training course by French partner BrailleNet and is used by partners Funka and Dias in the training of accessibility evaluators that are needed to meet the strongly growing demand for accessibility evaluation services across Europe. In addition, standards bodies like WAI / W3C already benefit because working group members draw on COMPARE content examples and assessments to validate test procedures and techniques that are developed as resources of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).

The AcceSciTech project addresses the challenges faced in providing access to scientific and technical literature for the visually impaired and, more broadly, for those who are not able to read conventional print. In this context, scientific and technical literature refers to all written text (articles, handouts, transparencies, books, etc.) that include complex elements such as mathematical formulae, graphs, charts, diagrams, notes, etc. These documents can cover both "exact sciences" and social sciences, and be of university level or aimed at the general public. Visually impaired readers access text in a number of ways: by touch through the use of Braille (either as static text printed on paper or dynamic text generated by a Braille terminal); by listening to text read by a narrator or a speech synthesiser; or by sight through large print (either on paper or on screen). These different means of accessing information are not exclusive: a student, for example, may find it useful to learn to read a sentence in Braille while listening to the same sentence. A good way to provide synchronised and simultaneous access to a document through a number of different modes of presentation is to use a format that separates the content of the document from the way it is presented. To make a document easy to read, it is also necessary to adopt a fine structure that will enable, for example, the user to navigate from section to section or from chapter to chapter with ease, or to opt whether or not to read certain elements such as footnotes. In order to address problems associated with accessing scientific and technical literature, the following questions may be asked: - How can one efficiently produce highly structured documents that originate from various sources (scans, PDF or LaTeX files provided by an editor, etc.)? - For documents containing many images, in which editorial environment should experts be invited to provide descriptions as and when the user needs them? - How can a visually impaired student with limited computer skills access a mathematics textbook with ease? - How does one translate a mathematical formula into spoken word? - How can one read and navigate with ease in a complex document using a Braille terminal? In France, the law grants approved organisations the right to ask editors to provide source files used in the production of printed works subject to copyright, so that they may be adapted and distributed to people with disabilities. In order to take advantage of this favourable legal environment, an optimal technical environment that will facilitate and increase the production of accessible texts must be created. The AcceSciTech project proposes to do this, in the context of scientific and technical literature, through the implementation of such formats as DAISY, EPUB and MathML. AcceSciTech also addresses issues related to publishing, by providing a collaborative environment dedicated to adapting books, and issues related to the presentation of and interaction with documents on a portable Braille notebook.