Accessible (academic) literature

1. What do I need to bear in mind with (specialised) literature?

As with all digital documents, staff, people with visual impairments in particular may experience barriers to reading academic books, journals, individual articles or case reports. Some staff, people rely on high contrast, clear text or even the use of screen readers. However, screen readers in particular only read aloud what they can recognise as headings, text or descriptions of graphics. It is therefore all the more important to remove technical barriers in scientific literature too.

Please note the following:

• Use digital formats (e.g. pdf or EPUB files) instead of scans.
• If scans are made, make them readable using OCR software (e.g. FreeOCR; gImageReader Portable; Abbyy FineReader, Omnipage).

Do not leave any markings, notes etc. in the document for the scan.

Then save the scan as a doc file.

• Refer students to the implementation services on offer. These take over the removal of barriers in learning materials and literature, e.g. from the TU Dortmund or PH Heidelberg.

As hardly any publishers have so far (as of 11/2022) paid attention to comprehensive accessibility when publishing (academic) literature, there is unfortunately no satisfactory example of best practice available at this point.