European Accessibility Act: What Publishers Need to Know!

PUBLISHERS & EUROPEAN ACCESSIBILITY ACT: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW!

For Publishers to be fully prepared for the implementation of the European Accessibility Act in June 2025 we have created a webinar with Simon Mellins, an independent consultant to increase industry awareness of accessibility issues, but also make achieving publishing accessibility less daunting and help to begin architecting real roadmaps to success and compliance.

1. Why now?

• Overarching summary of global regulations, to include EAA and beyond
• Emphasis on compliance and market access

2. Why EPUB?

• Brief history of EPUB format and its intrinsic connection to accessibility
• Introduction to EPUB 3 accessibility features
• EPUB VS PDF

3. Image Description/Alt text

• Describe what it is and why it matters
• Short versus long descriptions
• In-house VS outsourcing
• Importance of developing your own image description styleguide
• AI question

4. Metadata

• Regulatory background
• Discoverability and platform search engines
• OPF Schema.org metadata
• ONIX codelist 196

5. Strategy

• Overview of how a digital-first workflow prepares content for the future, including EPUB 4
• Thinking of content more broadly
• Whole-organisation change, making business cases without promising the wrong things

6. Q&A

Samantha Holman

Samantha Holman has been the CEO of the Irish Copyright Licensing Agency, the CMO for the text and image sector in Ireland, for twenty-one years. She has also been involved in the establishment of the CMO for Visual Artists in Ireland, IVARO, and lectures about copyright and authors’ rights at national and international level.

She has been a board member of IFRRO, the international umbrella organisation for RROs since 2015 and was elected First Vice President in 2022. Previously she was Chair of the IFRRO European Group and Chair of the European Development Committee which concentrated on capacity building and development of copyright systems and authors rights in Eastern Europe and Eurasia.

She lives just outside Dublin and is married to a poet!

Simon Mellins

Simon has worked in the publishing sector for over 15 years, covering content spanning magazines, STEM, trade, children's illustrated and just about everything else. As an accessibility subject matter expert with deep experience in publishing workflows, Simon knows how to manage ambition and intention with practicability, budget and time. Simon Mellins has been working with ebooks since the early days of the standard, and has a passion for all forms of digital publishing. Simon has specialised in accessibility since 2017, spearheading the effort at Penguin Random House UK to make content on a huge and time-critical publishing schedule truly, deeply accessible. Simon has worked with many different companies, interest groups and technology providers and has a deep understanding of the key technologies needed for your accessibility journey. With experience at the strategic level, working with stakeholders from legal, corporate, editorial and production backgrounds, he looks at accessibility as a broad, institutional effort. Simon's focus is on real, achievable roadmaps and goals that ensure your organisation can manage and thrive in change, provide the features and services that really impact print-disabled readers, and ensure a solid road to compliance and barrier-free entry into international markets. Simon is an experienced trainer with years of experience in presenting complex topics for non-technical audiences. He specialises in strategic and technical consulting, training and product development. Simon is a co-founder of the UK Publishing Accessibility Action Group (paag.uk) and sits on various W3 committees in the EPUB space.