As accessibility is the watchword of the web standards movement, it’s kind of depressing to hear that traditional publishing is serving the blind and partially sighted community so badly: research for the Royal National Institute of the Blind found only twelve per cent of maths and eight per cent of science GCSE textbooks were available in a format which could be used be visually-impaired children.
The RNIB has led accessibility programmes for years – notably Daisy – and I happen to know it’s currently at work on a new XML-based standard for transferring all newly published material to accessible formats. While this represents a massive challenge – not least persuading publishers to supply data in whatever format they come up with – it also shows the massive benefits of digitisation: true access for all.
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