PubCoder 5.1: Focus on accessibility

PubCoder 5.1 beta is now available and builds on the strong accessibility foundation already present in the software, adding targeted enhancements to exported content such as accessibility metadata, improved document semantics, keyboard access, and assistive technology support. Let’s break down what PubCoder offers for creating interactive, accessible content and highlight the improvements that version 5.1 brings to the table.

Images, Accessible Interactivity and Keyboard Access

PubCoder has supported alternative text for images for a long time now, so that meaningful visuals are announced correctly by assistive technologies, including screen readers such as VoiceOver on iOS and TalkBack on Android. When importing images from The Noun Project or Unsplash, available image descriptions are brought in as Alternative Text in the assets metadata, streamlining accurate labeling for screen readers, and reducing manual steps during accessible content production. In version 5.1, we optimized accessibility when using image objects as buttons: PubCoder now detects images with actions on tap and automatically marks them as buttons using role="button" and uses the Alternative Text of the object as its aria-label, while marking the img itself as decorative. Also, every object with actions on tap can now also be triggered by keyword using the enter key, so the combination of these features allows screen readers to correctly identify interactive objects and allow keyboard access to them. Furthermore, we added the ability to mark images as decorative when they are not semantically relevant to the content.

Text and Document Semantics

PubCoder has always supported text semantics using HTML tags like h1, h2, p and so on, to establish proper document structure, improving headings, landmarks, and reading order for screen readers including VoiceOver and TalkBack. We further developed these aspects improving the overall document structure even out of the single text box: now PubCoder exports objects in the DOM following the top-to-bottom order in which they are laid out on the page, as opposed to the previous order defined by Layers/z-index. This allows to handle correct content order on the page automatically, and even includes the ability to navigate the available tap interactions by keyboard. If you want to alter the tab order of interactive content, or manually add or remove objects from the tab keyboard navigation, you can do so using the new Tab Index property available for any object: this allows to remove the object from the chain of objects that can be activated using the tab key, or directly modify the order in which they appear in the DOM (thereby modifying the order in which they can be activated using the tab key). For even more manual tuning, we added an HTML Attributes property to each object so you can further customize the code if needed, manually adding aria-labelledby or other custom attributes as needed. Ultimately, all of these functions allow screen readers to better understand the order, hierarchy and semantics of the content.

Accessibility Metadata and Validation

PubCoder 5.1 also adds the ability to define Accessibility Metadata in Project Settings, such as Accessibility Summary, Access Modes, Sufficient Access Modes, Accessibility Features and Accessibility Hazards, that will be automatically included in content.opf package file, in compliance with the Schema.org accessibility properties for discoverability of creative works. Finally, we introduced several changes to fix and improve accessibility issues and also validation when using tools like Ace by DAISY: when correctly tagged with accessibility metadata, our Example Project went from 516 issues reported in Ace when exported with PubCoder 5.0.9 to zero when exported using PubCoder 5.1.

Conclusion

All of this adds to PubCoder’s classic EPUB 3 accessibility features and compliance, like Read Aloud support based on EPUB3 Media Overlays, which enables synchronized text and audio across compatible export targets, and built-in EPUB 3 Fixed Layout compliance verified using EPUBcheck. We are thrilled to hear your feedback on these new accessibility features and we are committed to improving accessibility in content made with PubCoder even more in the future. You can download PubCoder 5.1 beta on our Updates Page.