Inclusive and accessible publishing
Creating accessible documents
Inclusive and accessible publishing is the creation of published material that is designed to be accessible to everyone. Many clients mistake inclusive publishing as being just for people who are blind or who have vision impairments. But inclusive publishing is about so much more. It is also for people with a range of impairments – including physical, cognitive, sensory, learning and psychosocial disability.
What does disability mean?
Disability applies to people who have long-term physical, mental, cognitive or sensory impairments, which along with environmental and attitudinal barriers, hinders full and equal access to full participation in society. Disability may be visible or hidden, and may be permanent or temporary.
It is important to respect that people with disability, and people who are Deaf or hard of hearing, have the right to self-determine in how they want to be identified, for example, as ‘people with disability’, ‘disabled people’, ‘Deaf’, ‘hard of hearing’ or without labels.
Disability is not a negative term. For many, it means identity, community and culture.
The United Nations has more detail on the definition of disability.
The social model of disability
The social model of disability says that society is more disabling than the body. Environmental and attitudinal barriers, in conjunction with impairments, hinder full and equal participation in society.
Examples of barriers include:
a lack of ramps, lifts and flat surfaces in entrances and within buildings
not providing Auslan interpreters in the media and public events
not hiring people with disability in a workplace due to prejudice
complex written and spoken communication
not providing alt text or image descriptions on websites or social posts
no captions or transcripts on audio material and videos.
The social model of disability is internationally recognised and supported by the United Nations.
What is inclusive and accessible publishing?
Inclusive and accessible publishing goes beyond providing solutions to incorporate print accessibility to ensuring a publication is inclusive right from the start.
Many resources describe accessibility, usability and inclusive design as separate but linked concepts:
Accessibility is about making written material perceivable, understandable and relevant to all readers by addressing discriminatory or limiting aspects of the material; for example, by adding text descriptions (or ‘alt text’) for non-text components or design elements in consideration of people with disability. Alt text can be applied to images on websites, and also images on social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
Usability is about designing written material that considers user experience; for example, by providing captions that describe an image. The captions enhance the reading experience of everyone, not just readers who are blind or vision impaired, by providing additional information and context. However, they do improve accessibility, in that captions can be read by screen readers as well as by those without screen readers.
Inclusive design is about creating written material that can be accessed by all readers, without barriers. No retrofitting or correction is required later in the publication process because no barrier is created in the first place. The material is designed to be inclusive from inception, by thinking about the diversity of needs, backgrounds and experiences of the target audience. For example, providing transcripts for a radio program enables accessibility for people who are Deaf or hard of hearing, for people for whom English is a second language, and for researchers who prefer to read information rather than listen to it. The radio program and transcripts promote inclusion because they provide an equitable experience to those who access it, regardless of how they do so.
Inclusive publishing is publishing designed to address the range of difficulties that people may experience in reading, viewing, hearing or understanding written material.
What makes documents accessible, usable and inclusive?
Inclusive and accessible publishing benefits all users by ensuring that the information being communicated can be perceived and understood by the reader, irrespective of the format they use to access it. This includes attention to the elements of writing style, such as word choice and sentence length, and the visible elements of a document, such as fonts, colours and layout. Inclusive publishing also makes use of specific tools, such as screen tips and alt text, to facilitate integration with assistive technology.
Inclusive and accessible publishing actively facilitates the provision of material using different formats to suit the varying needs of users. For example, if a government department releases a report to the public as a PDF on a website, elements of the PDF may not be able to be read by screen readers. A non-disabled person can usually distinguish a heading from the body text because of the way it looks (e.g. it is a larger font and in bold), but someone using a screen reader cannot rely on these visual cues. The PDF therefore needs to be structured in a way that enables the screen reader to distinguish these elements for the user. This is done through semantic structuring: using bookmarks, tagging, and other principles of inclusive design such as appropriate heading levels and levels for lists and bullet points. Unless a PDF contains the appropriate semantic structuring, it cannot provide the same reading experience to sighted and non-sighted users. In addition to a PDF document, it is useful to provide other formats including a Microsoft Word document, rich text format and even an audio file with a transcript.
Plain English and Easy English
Using Plain English and Easy English can make documents more accessible for people with cognitive impairments and for people for whom English is not their first language.
Plain English is clear and concise language, free from technical jargon, flowery language and hyperbole. Tools to help you edit your writing to Plain English include Hemingway App and also the accessibility function in Microsoft Word.
Easy English uses every day words, plain sentence structure and pictures to support the words. Community consultation is encouraged when writing Easy English documents to ensure the intended audiences understand them.
Getting help
There are businesses that specialise in inclusive publishing and creating accessible documents. An informed editor should be able to advise clients on how they can improve accessibility of their publications, and where to go for further information and specialists in the field.
You could also work with sensitivity readers to ensure disability is represented accurately and without sensationalism and prejudice. Choose sensitivity readers who have lived experience of the topic you are writing about. For example, if you are writing about a character who has a severe skin condition, ask a person who has a severe skin condition to be a sensitivity reader, and pay them. You can also consult with communication professionals who are also people with disability to ensure you are writing about disability correctly. Better still, create a dedicated access and inclusion position for them!
It is important for editors to commission writing on disability by writers who are people with disability, and also ensure news stories about disability include interviews with people with disability. There is a saying in the disability rights movement – ‘Nothing about us without us’ – which means people with disability should be centered in media and literature, policy and decisions about them, rather than being represented by non-disabled people such as parents, academics and medical professionals.
The following resources are useful starting points to research inclusive and accessible publishing.
Access Easy English creates Easy English documents and provides training
Carly Findlay blog post on image descriptions for social media
Inclusive Publishing managed by The DAISY Consortium
Round Table Guidelines on Conveying Visual Information (2005)
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
Acknowledgements: I would like to thank Carly Findlay OAM – writer, speaker, appearance activist – who was the sensitivity reader for this post. I would also like to thank Julie Ganner – the IPEd representative to the Australian Inclusive Publishing Initiative – for reviewing this post prior to publication. It is through their work that I have learned, and continue to learn, about inclusive publishing, and through this how to better advocate for inclusive publishing as an editor.
