The panel, moderated by Sven Molter, VP of Product at Silverchair, featured Will Awad from Maverick Publishing Specialists, Simon Holt from Elsevier, Beth Richard from the Institute of Development Studies, and Stacy Tucker from the American Medical Association's JAMA Network.
Understanding True Accessibility
Will Awad, who brings a legal background to his accessibility work, outlined the foundational principles of digital accessibility using the POUR framework from the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG): Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Robust."Making sure your content is perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust is key," Awad explained. These principles apply universally, regardless of geography or regulatory framework.
Beyond regulatory compliance, Awad emphasized other compelling reasons for investing in accessibility: "There's inclusivity and social responsibility to make sure that our product reaches everyone. In the world, there's one in five people who have some kind of disability."
He noted additional benefits including enhanced SEO, legal risk mitigation, and reputational advantages: "No business would like to affect their reputation in the industry. They all want to make sure that their content is accessible and compliant."
Implementation Approaches Across Organizations
Simon Holt, Head of Content Accessibility at Elsevier, emphasized that accessibility cannot be an afterthought: "Accessibility isn't a nice add-on at the end that one or two people can take care of. We need to really think about the concept of 'born accessible to really build accessibility into what we're doing from the get-go."As a visually impaired person who uses a screen reader, Holt brings personal experience to his work. "If content doesn't have alt text, then I'm missing out on all the information that comes from images," he shared.
For large organizations like Elsevier, Holt explained how they maintain consistency through standards and a team structure: "We have me and my team who deal with the content, and then we have a team in technology who really look after the products and the platforms. And we're supported by a team of accessibility champions in each department."
Beth Richard offered a contrasting perspective from a small publisher: "In a smaller organization, often you have people who are really passionate about a topic and will raise it as an area of importance perhaps before others, including senior management, are aware of it."
At the Institute of Development Studies, with its four-person publications team, Richard described their grassroots approach: "We started an accessible communications group with people from across the whole institute. As the momentum built, we gained a member from the senior leadership team."
Richard outlined how small publishers can turn their size into an advantage: "I think there are really big opportunities for small publishers to be quite agile and creative and proactive in our approach, perhaps having really close relationships with authors and our freelancers that can allow you to make really small changes over a period of time."
Stakeholder Engagement
Engaging stakeholders effectively emerged as crucial to successful accessibility implementation. For smaller publishers, these relationships are particularly vital."For an organization of our size, our relationships with individual freelance copy editors, typesetters, and proofreaders are really important," Richard said. "We're working with our authors and freelancers to try and embed accessibility throughout the editorial and production workflow."
Stacy Tucker from JAMA Network emphasized comprehensive engagement: "It's engaging everyone at the planning stage in the beginning. It's not just a few key folks. It's the publisher, marketing manager, product manager, project manager, QA analyst, business analyst, and getting everyone on the same page."
Beyond Compliance: The Road Ahead
The panelists agreed that accessibility work doesn't end with meeting the EAA deadline. "That question is partly funny because you're never done," Tucker noted. "I think there's constant upgrades, implementations of new features and functionalities, publishing of content that if you're not maintaining and keeping up, you have the chance of falling out of compliance."She also highlighted the dual deadlines within the EAA framework: "There's the one in 2025, but there's the one in 2030. So, you need to make sure you're not only compliant for 2025 with content that's June 28 forward. But in 2030, there's content that was the backfile that needs to become compliant."
Simon Holt compared accessibility to other evolving compliance areas: "I think what I'd say about accessibility, is this isn't a one-and-done thing. I always use the analogy of something like data privacy or security. This is always moving, quite an iterative and evolving field."
He predicted that the EAA is just the beginning: "I see it as the start of a slew of legislation that we're going to have to keep focusing on over the next coming years, as opposed to a one-and-done thing."
Practical Recommendations and Tools
The panelists shared several practical recommendations for integrating accessibility into content workflows. Will Awad suggested establishing an image bank with alt text in a CMS system, while cautioning that "the EAA never mentioned the word PDFs at all. So, if you have journals, start thinking about, how can I make these journals fully accessible?"Simon Holt emphasized author engagement: "It's really important that as you're creating the content, you think about what's the best way to engage authors." He underscored that accessible features like alt text should be considered part of the core content: "As a reader, actually you just consider alt text as part of what it is that you're reading. So, if that isn't as good quality as everything else, it will affect your experience of consuming the whole book or journal."
For testing accessibility, the panelists recommended several tools. Stacy Tucker highlighted "screen readers, the WAVE tool by WebAIM, SortSite scans, and contrast checkers," while Will Awad emphasized human testing: "The main tool I use is human, testing the website using just the keyboard."
Simon Holt stressed the importance of involving people with lived experience: "Unless you're willing to learn how to use a screen reader and blindfold yourself whilst you're doing it, you really do need to engage people with lived experience. You never launch any other product without getting testing from people who are going to use it."
As publishers look toward the EAA deadline and beyond, the panel's insights illustrate that true accessibility is not just about compliance, it's about creating content that can genuinely reach and serve all potential users.
Accessibility Resources Shared by the Panel
Screen-readers (Since some read differently, panelists recommend using multiple screen readers.): Benetech certification:- TPGI Colour Contrast Analyzer – A fantastic tool used to check text/foreground and background color
- The Accessible Publishing Learning Network (APLN) – Contains great, plain language resources and checklists on all sorts of accessibility topics, from eBook production to organizational strategy to digital marketing
- The DAISY Consortium webinars – A great resource in the accessible publishing and reading ecosystem that presents on a diverse range of topics
- Benetech DIAGRAM Center’s image description writing guidelines – Helps content creators provide accessible image descriptions
- The WAVE tool by WebAIM – Helps authors make their content more accessible to viewers with disabilities
- SortSite – Tests your site for accessibility and usability issues
- Contrast Checkers – Checks web contrast and gives you a contrast ratio score
- Ace by DAISY – Checks the accessibility of EPUB files
- PAC24 – PDF accessibility testing
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