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The Role of Public Libraries in a World of Digital Reading

I’m looking out at the world from Sweden, a 10 million country in the wealthy north Europe, where ebook and audio book retail has had an increase of 50 % of sales per year 2015-2018. The Swedes’ digital book consumption has now reached similar levels as the early adopter markets, USA and UK, where digital reading for a while now has represented 30-60 % of all book consumption, depending on which metric you prefer.

In many markets monthly subscription (rental) is a growing model for trade books – meaning that the consumer pays 20 EUR or so for an “all you can eat” offer. This model first became dominant in music and video services like Spotify and Netflix, and is now spreading to other media. At the same time as retail of digital books has grown rapidly in my country, the digital ebook and audio book services provided by public libraries haven’t been able to keep up. It seems this is true also in many other markets.

Charts showing drastic increase in digital book sales in Sweden 2014-2017, with no significant change in physical book sales or loans over the same period.

Are we headed for a point where public libraries become irrelevant as providers of books? I think we need to look at the core purposes of libraries to answer this question: A core purpose of public libraries is to support reading and create equal conditions for access to information, reading materials. This is to help people learn, work, conduct research on various levels and to enjoy stories told by masters of the written word. The activity of reading helps building cultural identity and gives strength to citizens of the democratic society – dictators don’t like public libraries. Therefore, lending out books in a way that is relevant to people is an important tool for public libraries to fulfill their purpose. Slipping out of digital reading therefore seems risky. Libraries have prioritized target groups. These are all relevant in the conversation about digital books and library services to promote reading:

Children and young people. This group is increasingly online on a daily basis, but there are signs that reading skills and book reading habits decline in some places. Book reading is under heavy competition from other digital sources of entertainment such as games and video. Can we make reading great again?
People with disabilities – For this group who are traditionally served by specialized libraries run by the blindness movement, digital availability and accessibility of content and services in the mainstream is a game changer. If that is true for retail, it should also be true for public library services.
Immigrants, refugees and Minorities – Often low resourced people and in risk of marginalization. Limited access to books in a first language and weak reading traditions creates an especially challenging mix. Access to physical collections in libraries depends on geographic location and the right to first language reading is hard to live up to using local council run physical libraries.
Socio-economically challenged – Investing in digital books is low priority for people who struggle to make ends meet. For this group free to use public library services are evidently important.

Lending digital books is not like physical and libraries are now regarded as retail channels by publishers. The copyright legislation makes conditions around digital books different from those of physical books – and in reality most library lending of popular fiction is based on libraries renting books from commercial aggregator companies rather than buying and owning copies for lending. The shift of model from owning copies to renting has waved the power balance. In the digital domain the publishing companies exercise much more control of what ends up in libraries. If a publisher sense that library lending is not good for business, they can easily remove their books from the library’s digital book shelves by for instance rising the price per loan above a pain level, public libraries can thereby not afford high service levels on best seller titles. Since content is king, the attraction power of the library offer in terms of content may thereby have paled a bit in comparison to what was possible with physical books. On the other hand libraries can now – like online retail – be open 24-7, with a free to use service for everyone with a device and a library card. There seems to be very little evidence that library lending reduces commercial sales, but this is a much debated topic. Publishing companies have tried out embargos against library lending of important titles to test what the impact is, but without clear results it seems. “There is a lack of appreciation of the great value that authors, agents and publishers receive by having their ebooks, digital audio books, and books available for discovery and potential use in public libraries” – Overdrive CEO Steve Potash Library Journal Sept 06, 2018 Public library collections are about breadth, depth and memory. Big city libraries or consortias of many small libraries have millions of unique physical titles, with great coverage of the backlist and out of retail books. They typically have substantial collections of books in different languages. The lack of top 100 best sellers in public libraries doesn’t have to be a great problem. One strength of libraries is their active curation and ability to provide many alternative titles, possibly lift titles that have cooled down in retail. During research work conducted in 2018 I benchmarked some international examples of digital library services that support reading and serve ebooks and audio books to large populations. What I found was truly inspiring to me. The three most successful major services I could find were Denmarks eReolen, Onlinebibliotheek.nl covering the Netherlands and New York public library’s SimplyE. All three serve millions of people, use library owned infrastructure and develop their service using small multifunctional teams with user orientation and open source development in their DNA. Most successful is eReolen Denmark. Astonishing 6% of Denmarks population have checked out a book through them during the past 12 months. eReolen, Onlinebibliotheek and SimplyE seem to have come far in reinventing what a digital public library can be – and have found a position where they can co-exist alongside digital publishing rather than fighting them. The scale that they have, serving whole nations or a large city as in NYPL’s case, enables them to approach negotiations with content providers with their head held high. To scale up public libraries will in many instances require political awareness and leadership, since public libraries are often small local independent actors with no nation-wide governance. It sounds boring, but my major conclusion is that organization of public libraries or rather the lack thereof is the core problem and where it typically fails. So why do I think innovative public library services are so important? Well, for one, universally designed library services have a great potential to also be inclusive and welcoming to people with disabilities. In the long run, copyright exception based services such as the classic “library for the blind” have the potential to be supported or even replaced by inclusive mainstream retail and library services, in the process opening up a much more diverse range of content to an audience who have historically faced limited reading options.

Many thanks to Jesper Klein for this article which is based on his presentation “Marrakesh treaty in action” at Oodi library Helsinki Finland March 2019 Read More

Transparency that Empowers

Creating and delivering accessible content for all users is not a new initiative, but recent global trends have seen a more fervent demand for accessible publications to be the mainstream. Achieving this cannot be the work of one publisher, platform, or consortium, but a combined effort of the whole community. This community has worked hard to create a strong ecosystem that enables the creation, delivery, and verification of accessible content, but what remains to be done?

As with many industries, we also have a “last mile” problem that needs to be solved. All of this great work has been done, but if nobody knows about it, how can it help solve real issues? What’s needed is transparency, and VitalSource^Ⓡ is excited to be leading the way in providing this transparency into the accessibility features that publishers are providing on our platform.

VitalSource has a strong commitment to delivering content that is accessible, and in addition to being a Friend of the DAISY Consortium, sits on the board of the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF), creators of the EPUB specification and continues to be actively involved in W3C Publishing. Creating high-quality, accessible content to a consistent standard requires guidelines to support content providers. Industry standards such as the EPUB Accessibility Specifications 1.0, which focus on the discoverability, optimisation, and accessibility of EPUB publications, are one example that content providers have to ensure quality of content. This specification lays out the formal requirements that must be met to produce accessible content, including the use of metadata. Metadata describes and gives information about products, such as title, author, page count, alternative text, and if the font within the eBook is resizable—designed to help users find relevant information and discover resources of use to them. Some accessibility compliance metadata is embedded within the publication using scheme.org and Onix Codelist 196, which allows content providers to include further details of the accessibility compliance of their content in the ONIX product message, the industry standard used to communicate product information. As the content is distributed into multiple channels, this data can be made available so that customers can be aware of the accessibility features pre-purchase.

For the past 18 months, we have been working with all parts of the supply chain to ensure that our partners can deliver content to us that has accessibility features described using the above industry standards, and that we make those features transparently available on our platform. At this time, we rely on the publishers to provide accurate accessibility metadata information in their EPUBs. We do not inspect the content documents to verify the stated metadata against the actual page content because there are so many different levels of what is considered “accessible”.

The first two places you will see the new feature transparency appearing is on the product detail pages in our store, including our faculty sampling site and all white-labelled stores that we operate, as well as the catalogue feed that our distribution partners use in their platforms.

This means that for the first time:

Our publishing partners will have a clear ability to indicate the accessibility features and assistive technology support in the product detail pages of their content.
Instructors who are selecting content for adoption will be able to see the accessibility features that a particular text provides to accommodate a variety of learners.
Learners can clearly see if their assigned content will accommodate their accessibility needs from the product detail page before they purchase.

Everyone will be able to see a page of detailed accessibility features that have been enabled within the text, including the level of compatibility with assistive technology and any issues that a reader may come across. Not only is this accessibility transparency a huge time saver for those purchasing eTextbooks, it’s also a money saver. Learners no longer need to cross their fingers and hope the eBook will meet their needs—they can check beforehand and purchase with confidence and certainty.

VitalSource works with incredible content providers all around the world who are as equally committed to accessible content as we are. There are currently more than 6,000 titles from over 50 publishing partners already displaying their accessibility features, with more coming in every day. We remain committed to doing everything possible to help all of our users and partners in solving their need for accessible content transparency. While we are excited to announce this capability, we are even more excited about future plans for the expansion to other parts of our platform and the addition of more capabilities (like search) to further empower users.

Learn more about VitalSource accessibility at: https://get.vitalsource.com/accessibility

If you would like to see an example, here is a title from our partner at Pearson: https://www.vitalsource.com/textbooks?term=9780134776750

Thanks to Vanessa Boddington of VitalSource for this article highlighting the groundbreaking work they have been doing to ensure information about the accessibility of publications reaches the people who need it.

The CSUN Assistive Technology conference is said to be the largest annual conference on technology and accessibility. As usual the event was packed with informative sessions, interesting exhibits and the opportunity to meet with experts and collaborators from around the world. George Kerscher and Richard Orme were in attendance to represent the DAISY Consortium. It was also wonderful to see many DAISY members and friends participating in the conference.

The conference programme is complex, with many sessions happening at any time. As we have for many years, DAISY partnered with the organisers to produce the conference materials in DAISY, HTML and EPUB formats. These were available on the conference and DAISY websites, through the Dolphin Easyreader app and via the Redshelf platform. In particular the EPUB version was a great demonstration of the power of accessible, standards-based information publishing. It was very convenient to navigate the programme, to add bookmarks and notes, and to choose from mainstream and specialist apps and devices.

Many DAISY Friends were demonstrating their latest products in the exhibit hall and conference sessions. Several companies were showing their products with EPUB 3 support, including Humanware with the Braillenote Touch, Vinvision with the E10 audio player and Dolphin with their Easyreader apps. The developers of popular dyslexia software apps Texthelp and Kurzweil were also at the conference, and we had constructive discussions about further improving their support for EPUB.

Born accessible publications has been a growing theme in the conference programme over recent years, and several academic publishers attended to present, exhibit and meet with delegates. In one session Pearson, McGraw-Hill Education and Macmillan Learning described the accessibility initiatives of major academic publishers. In addition to digital textbooks, we met with Atypon and Mediawire to learn how they are bringing accessible EPUB to their publication services.

CELA and Bookshare presented on their collaboration to bringing a fully accessible public library catalogue experience to Canadians with print disabilities. And it was standing room only at our session “EPUB 101: An Essential Briefing for All Higher Education Professionals”. The progress of inclusive publishing in US higher education is wonderful to demonstrate, and the positive impact on students with reading disabilities impressive. We have made the EPUB 101 slides and associated resources are available to download. We also ran session reviewing the production of EPUB from popular word processors. We look forward to sharing news on this topic soon.

Amazon, Google and Microsoft all had a major presence at CSUN. Many DAISY library patrons are choosing to access services through these companies’ products and George and Richard met with their accessibility leaders in each organization to discuss developments in accessible publishing and reading.

Whilst many challenges still remain (we participated in several discussion on maths and chemistry), one session on Friday demonstrated how far we have come, when a blind author explained how he had independently written and published a book that he was now able to read through his voice controlled smart speaker. What will the next 12 months bring? Next year’s delegates will find out between March 9 to March 13, 2020. The Call for Papers opens on September 12.

New legislation in the EU which includes accessibility requirements for both reading systems and content, could have a positive and lasting impact on practices around the world. The following article from Fondazione LIA takes a closer look at the new European Directive.

On March 13 2019, the European Parliament approved the so called European Accessibility Act, an EU Directive aimed at improving the market for accessible products and services, removing barriers in the Member States through legislations with a range of accessibility requirements, bringing benefits to persons with disabilities and elderly people throughout the EU and with potential for global benefits.

The Directive was created to increase the availability of accessible products and services in the EU market, and to improve the accessibility of information.

It provides a definition of persons with disabilities in line with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, adopted on 13 December 2006 (UN CRPD), to which the Union has been a Party since 21 January 2011 and which all Member States have ratified. As stated by UN CRPD, the Directive considers that persons with disabilities “include those who have long-term physical, mental, intellectual or sensory impairments which in interaction with various barriers may hinder their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others”. It promotes full and effective equal participation by improving access to mainstream products and services that, through their initial design or subsequent adaptation, address the particular needs of persons with disabilities.

The Directive applies to many products and services such as consumer general purpose computer hardware systems and operating systems for those hardware systems, self-service terminals (ie. payment or ticketing terminals), consumer banking services, but also e-books and dedicated reading software. Due the fact that e-books are considered a service, the concept of a service provider now includes publishers and all the other economic operators involved in their distribution.

The Directive requires publishers to produce their digital publications in an accessible format, and also requires the entire supply (retailers, e-commerce sites, hardware and software reading solutions, online platforms, DRM solutions, etc.) chain to make content available to users through accessible services.

The technical accessibility requirements are currently described at high level in the legislation, but the Commission shall demand EU standardization bodies to define EU harmonized standards for accessibility. Considering these standard should be, as stated in the Directive, market-driven. The standard organizations managing the publishing standards, like W3C and the DAISY Consortium along with other organizations working in the field of accessibility in the publishing industry, like Fondazione LIA and EDRLab, are now working in collaboration to ensure that the standards currently used in the sector may also become those adopted by the Directive.

In the legislation there are some exceptions, in particular for smaller organizations (microenterprises of less than 10 staff and a turnover or balance sheet of less than €2M) when producing an accessible version causes a disproportionate burden, or when a fundamental alteration of the content of the product would be required. “Market Surveillance Authorities” will be responsible for checking compliance of product and services to the requirements of the Directive. Fondazione LIA believes that, in some cases, publishers may find a solution to produce the accessible versions working in collaboration with the Authorized entities through the Marrakech Treaty. The European Accessibility Act also requires that detailed information on the accessibility of products and services are provided to end users in the distribution channels, allowing users with specific reading requirements to make informed purchasing decision. To achieve these results, it will be therefore necessary to adopt the available international standards for accessibility (from formats to metadata) and consistenty provide visibility to the accessibility related information on the retailers and publishers’ web sites. It will also be crucial to make information of commercially accessible titles available using the metadata standard like Schema.org and ONIX that are designed to record information on the accessibility features of a digital publication. Furthermore, while using search engines, the possibility for a print impaired user of retrieving accessible titles will become fundamental.

The new Directive should be implemented by EU Member States in their national legislation within three years from the approval (by March 2022). Once implemented, it will apply to new products and services that come on the market six years after the approval of the Directive (March 2025). It will be supplemented by harmonized European technical standards. Where harmonized standards are not yet developed, the Directive gives the Commission powers to adopt implementing acts establishing technical specifications to achieve the same aim.

More information on how the entire value chain may find solutions to implement the directive are available in the paper “E-books for all – Towards an accessible digital publishing ecosystem”, published by Fondazione LIA.

Photo of Diane and Kory at the Ironman finish line

Training for any sporting endeavour takes dedication, commitment—and most of all—motivation. Contrary to popular opinion, I do not roll out of bed in the morning, leap to my feet and run downstairs to the treadmill with a smile on my face yelling, “Woot, woot!”

In reality, it’s more like dragging myself out of bed and trying to figure out if I want to expend the energy to pry my eyes open (I mean, it isn’t like I’m using them). I am 53 years old and totally blind. I am also an Ironman.

You might be asking yourself what my experience of becoming an Ironman has to do with accessible publishing. Well there are more than a few similarities to the journey.

In 2009 I began challenging myself. I began with a skydive and then moved on in 2010 to driving a race car and finally, in 2011, I rappelled down the outside of a 29 storey building. In 2012 I was lost for what I could do next when a classmate from university sent me an article about a blind woman competing in triathlon events.

“Diane, you could do that,” said my friend, Cheryl.

Given that I was pretty much a couch potato, 47 and blind, I thought she had lost her mind. But, not one to turn down a challenge, I decided to get fit. Six months later I completed my first Olympic distance triathlon (1500 m swim, 40 km bike, and 10 km run). I crossed the finish line second to last but I crossed it upright and, for me, that was success!

“I bet you could do a half Ironman,” said Cheryl (1.9 km swim, 90 km bike ride and 21.1 km run).

I told her that she was crazy and that I didn’t want to talk to her for at least a month. She took me to my word and a month later we were signing up for a half iron distance.

Since then I have completed several Olympic distances and four half iron distances. In August of 2015, I attempted my first full Ironman (4km swim, 180km bike, and 42km run, all to be completed within 17 hours).

The day of the race was beautiful and sunny. I felt calm and ready to go the distance. The swim went well, and the first 90 km of the bike phase felt wonderful. The temperature rose to 40 degrees Celsius and I began to feel the heat.

I managed to reach kilometre 21 of the run when heatstroke took over and I decided that my health was more important than the finish line. I was disappointed but knew that I made the right decision. I told the organizers of the race that I would be back in two years to try again.

Two years later there I was standing at the start line of Ironman Mont Tremblant 2017 (in Quebec Province, Canada). I was wondering if maybe I had lost my mind when I lost my sight—I mean what was I thinking! None the less, the gun went off and the fireworks exploded. Before I knew it, there I was running across the beach and diving into the water for just one more shot at becoming an Ironman.

The day was beautiful, and my guide Kory and I felt wonderful. It was a long, but fun filled day and when we crossed the finish line I was exhausted and exhilarated all at the same time.

In some ways I still can’t believe that I managed this monumental achievement, but it has definitely taught me that anything is possible.

For those new to the topic, adopting accessible publishing can also seem quite daunting, for large, mainstream publishers as well as smaller concerns where a change to established business practices and adaptations to existing workflows can be necessary. In discussion with publishers around the world DAISY Members have heard feedback that what initially appears to be a path strewn with many barriers, over time becomes an organizational benefit with overwhelming positives.

It is somewhat rare that we perfect something of significance on the first attempt, and the same is true with inclusive publishing. Many have said that accessibility is a journey and not a destination, so we might reasonably expect a few bumps along the way. But, if we learn from those experiences and adjust our processes accordingly, it could still be considered a success. A small step in the right direction will still have an impact so it’s important not to give up and to keep motivated and focused.

So like athletic challenges, what may appear difficult at the start, can, with training, dedication and commitment be achievable. An increasing number of publishers are working towards this fantastic achievement every year.

Thanks to Diane Bergeron, a Vice-President at CNIB and member of the DAISY Consortium Board for contributing this article.

Our Second Round Table was held in London on 31 October, to further discuss and plan the future direction of standards and tools for the production and sharing of music braille files, following on from the first Round Table Meeting (Leipzig, June). Our primary focus is to secure the production of future paper music braille by agencies and in education.

Arne Kyrkjebø and Sarah Morley Wilkins chaired the meeting, to review progress on work areas identified after the Leipzig meeting, and to plan for longer-term initiatives.

This lively meeting of around 40 in the room with 12 online represented many of the major blindness agencies doing music braille production, as well as educators and some of the developers of the conversion tools. Experts came from Australia, Canada, China, Europe, India, Korea, New Zealand and USA.

Work is underway around the table to improve music braille production in a range of ways, and we heard progress updates about:

Tests of music braille conversion tools (BrailleMuse, GoodFEEL, Hodder) with different music files, which has generated a list of fixes sent to developers, to try to improve the tools immediately.
DZB’s Hodder tool from DZB is being trialled at Dedicon with a range of music files, and both agencies will decide in 2019 what opportunities there are for their ongoing relationship, and perhaps for others too.
Influencing the successor file format to MusicXML, MNX, by submitting our requirements for music mark-up to the W3C.
Drafting an approach to publishers to make it easier for trusted intermediaries to obtain suitable master files, ideally without fee or contract.
Sharing metadata tags for online collections of music braille files (Bookshare, ABC Global Library Service, and NLS), to ensure easy file-sharing and retrieval.
Developing a more defined MusicXML specification suitable for faster and more accurate and reliable conversion into music braille, with guidance for mark-up specialists.
Preparing a requirements document to share with developers defining our major requirements for a future sustainable, accurate and reliable tool (or tools). A process for collective agreement and financial contributions will need to be in place if funds are required for major development.

Our next Round Table Meeting will be in Geneva 28-29 May 2019, where we anticipate having a focus on the tool specification and technical development plans, and MusicXML specification guidance.

For more information please email us at musicbraille [at] daisy [dot] org to be added to the circulation list.

All project reports, documents, meeting notes and presentations are on the Music Braille Project Page.

Photo of a presentation from the annual conference of the Swedish DAISY Consortium

The Swedish DAISY Consortium consist of 42 members, including universities, regional libraries, Swedish Agency for Accessible Media and related organizations. We are a full member of the DAISY Consortium.

We held our annual conference in Stockholm in November. This year’s topic was Accessible reading for democracy and the conference focused on how to enable participation for all. The audience of the conference was mostly librarians from public and university libraries, staff from MTM (Swedish Agency for Accessible media), disability organizations and other interest groups.

Christine Bylund opened the conference with a presentation on what it is like to break the norm. As society’s norm is a fully functional white heterosexual person – what’s it like to break this norm as a person with disabilities? How does this norm make us think about how a person with disabilities should act, what a person with disabilities can do and should behave? Christine pointed out the importance of making persons with disabilities visible in media, commercials and in all parts of society, so we can challenge the norms on what a person with disabilities can and can’t do.

The power of digitalization and how to bridge the digital divide was one themes of the conference. Professor Jan Gulliksen discussed the digitalization as a transforming force, that gives us great opportunities. He talked about how society has to change with the digitalization and use its possibilities. A number of different projects aiming to make more people, especially people with different disabilities, a part of the digital community, was also presented.

Another theme was how to make information accessible for all. The project “Be an Easy-to-Read Politician” is an online-course to help politicians write Easy-to-Read Swedish, enabling people with reading disabilities to participate in political discussions. Another project on Easy-to Read texts was also presented. The project has tested on end users what it is that actually makes a text easy to read and easy to understand. The result shows that it is not only how you write the text that makes it easy to read, it is also important how you present it – layout, font etcetera.

To reach new users is always a challenge and it was very inspiring to listen to how librarians from Linköping public library have reached out to new users in unexpected ways and in unexpected contexts. The librarians have for example visited union meetings and informed about the libraries services for persons with reading disabilities.

The importance of working together with mainstream, to make publishers and media understand the benefits of inclusive publishing was another topic. Fredrik Karlsson, MTM, told us about how MTM are involved in a number of pilot studies on how to encourage publishers to use The DAISY Consortiums tests for accessible ebooks. The mainstream publishers has shown great interest in inclusive publishing.

Two guest speakers from the Nordic countries also spoke at the conference. Öyvind Engh from NLB in Norway told us about new collaborations that aims to reach new users and to increase the access to accessible media. One way of doing this is to work together with mainstream publishers, so that the commercial titles are produced accessible from the beginning – born accessible. Öyvind pointed out the Marrakesh-treaty as an example of how NLB will be able to give students access to adapted textbooks faster. We learned more about the benefits from the Marrakesh-treaty from Kirsi Ylläne from Celia. The treaty makes it easier to share adapted texts. If a book is available in Daisy-format in one country, you can share that copy and not all countries has to adapt the same text. This helps us use the resources better and hopefully more books will be available in an accessible format. Kirsi explained that the Marrakesh-treaty makes it possible for universities to exchange adapted texts directly with another university in another country.

The audience left the conference infilled with inspiration and new knowledge. “This was the best conference that the Swedish Daisy Consortium has arranged” said one on the participants.

The presentations are available on the Swedish Daisy Consortium website and on YouTube (in Swedish).

Thanks to Elin Nord, Chair of the Swedish DAISY Consortium for contributing this article.

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