WTF is "Accessibility Features"?

[TimothyEllis]

WTF is "Accessibility Features"?

This seems to be something new added to the submission process, but the help page for it is very unhelpful.

Which answer are you supposed to use, when all your images are backmatter text, or a covers poster?

Makes no sense to me.

Anyone explain it? And what answer you should give?

The default answer is "I don't know".

[Post-Doctorate D]

In the U.S., business websites are required to be ADA-accessible.  It's conceivable that Amazon is adding this to eBooks now, though generally eBooks by their nature are pretty accessible.  Images would require special attention.  I doubt very many of us use images, but if you do, they should have ALT text in their tags so readers for the visually impaired would be able to describe the image for those that can't see it.  Also, and again most of us don't do this, but if you are putting text in specific colors or using backgrounds and such, you want to make sure there is a high enough contrast so it is readable by people with poor vision.  And so on.

Of course, that's a guess but that's what comes to mind when someone says "accessibility features."

[djmills]

Yes, this. ^^
Mainly, use colours that can be seen by colour-blind people, eg. high contrast.
Use text tags to describe every image.
There are more related to coding programs including a zoom lens, but not needed for publishing. And AI results from googling "accessibility features" covers most of it.

[R. C.]

Post-Doctorate D is correct.  I was forced by a security plugin to update the ALT text for all the images on my site...

R.C.

[TimothyEllis]

How does Alt text even work in a book on a reader device?

I've never seen an image come up with a popup or something.

No idea how you even do that in Word.

Don't even see the point of why you'd need to in the backmatter of a novel.

[Post-Doctorate D]

If an image is purely superfluous, such as an image used to give the impression of round corners (before CSS had routines for that), then the ALT text can be empty.

But, if the image has a purpose, then it should have ALT text.

I don't use Word so I don't know.  I know Pages can do it so I would imagine Word can as well.  But, if I recall, you use an older version of Word, which may not have the feature.

[R. C.]

...

No idea how you even do that in Word.

Don't even see the point of why you'd need to in the backmatter of a novel.

MS Word: Place the image, righ click, choses View Alt Text.

My superficial understanding is the push for "Accessibility" is being pushed by the EU. New rules have filtered down...

R.C.

[oganalp]

Alt text for an image for screen readers, when an image is not a "necessary" part of the narrative, is marked as decorative. This instructs the screen reader to skip over that image and continue the reading order without considering the image.

If an image is essential, then alt-text needs to be written with as minimal language "polishing" as possible, focusing on being direct and descriptive instead.

MS Word: It has been 3.5 years since I last prepared accessible documents (I did for AODA, not ADA, but they are similar. AODA is for Ontario, Canada), but what I recall is that MS Word was very problematic with accessibility, and we often needed to use Acrobat to resolve post-MS Word issues. It almost always ruined the read order (how a screen reader understands what to read when), and table headers were also problematic. Math equations were non-existent, although MS claimed screen readers recognized their language (they did not). We had to write them in MathML using software that did what it claimed, or write the formulas, take screenshots, and then write the description in alt-text to explain the formulas. It was not fun when I had to create hundreds of documents.

If you are using MS Word to do accessibility stuff, I am unsure if MS has upped their game. These issues I mentioned were all in Win 11 and office 365. It is not MS's style to update things to fix; they usually change things in the next major version or SKU.

[LilyBLily]

Adding things to enable accessibility can be a pain, but just imagine how frustrating the world is to those with the disabilities these features are supposed to aid. I have two people in my family whose eyesight is extremely limited--and they're the lucky ones whose disease won't render them totally blind.

I've done some alt text myself in the past along with other kinds of coding meant to differentiate text meant for one audience from text meant for another. But I haven't done it for any of my books, which are not illustrated, which have no equations or odd types of text, and which can be read to a person out loud by various electronic means at no cost. And I believe AI is behind such free resources, so let's put one check mark in the "Good" column.