Workshop on Accessible Manga and Comics
On the afternoon of Tuesday November 10th, alongside the DAISY Board meetings, an online and in-person workshop will be hosted to discuss the latest developments in accessible manga and comic books.
Most digital manga is sold as page images only. Many publishers say texts should be protected from piracy. But pirates do not need the text data. They make copies from printed pages and screen images. Image-only e-books do not stop piracy. They only shut out readers who need text-to-speech or other ways to read the text.
The basic requirements are already in EPUB Accessibility 1.1 and WCAG:
- Text in speech balloons is real text, not part of the image.
- The reading order of text blocks is set.
- Maps, tables and other figures with text have a short description.
We want to find practical ways to make manga accessible.
Two kinds of accessible manga
We will keep two kinds of work separate in the discussion, because they have different goals and costs:
- Accessible manga made by Authorized Entities (AEs) under copyright exceptions and the Marrakesh Treaty. The main goal is that readers who cannot read print understand the content, at a cost that AEs can carry.
- Born accessible manga made by publishers for the market. Here we ask what minimum accessibility every publisher should provide.
What we invite
We invite AEs, libraries, producers and anyone working on accessible manga and comics to share:
- What your organization is doing now
- The problems you face
- Your recommendations to publishers, reading system developers, governments and the DAISY Consortium
There will be no long presentations. Each organization may give a short statement (about 5 minutes). Most of the time will be open discussion.
How to register: This meeting is being coordinated by ATDO. To register please send an e-mail to info@atdo.jp with “Manga Workshop” in the subject line. Please write your name, your organization, and your department or position. Please also tell us whether you will join at the venue or online, and whether you wish to give a short statement. If you do, please add a title and 2–3 lines about your topic.