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Towards Accessible Content Processing

Objectives

The primary goal of the ProAccess project was to improve the accessibility of educational content in the eLearning value chain for visually impaired people, through the validation of two EU projects: ORMEE and EUAIN: the first addressing the key issue of digital rights management; and the second addressing accessible production workflows.

This validation was intended as a preliminary phase for the subsequent creation of practical instruments that address two key issues in the path towards the increased accessibility of content:

• the improvement of content production workflows to ease the conversion of digital files into accessible versions and
• the correct and effective management of all legal and contractual aspects involved in making available content to disadvantaged people

The main focus of the project lay in the accessibility of educational content for visually impaired people but the concepts, methods and approaches were conceived so that the project results would be applicable to most kinds of content and to other cognitive impairments, such as dyslexia.

Outcomes

• Guidelines for producing accessible content; aimed at providing support and information to content producers in the process of adopting a workflow where digital structured content could be created that can be easily converted into accessible materials.
• Guidelines for the drafting of licenses; enabling all the actors involved in the value chain of content production, conversion and distribution to provide and use accessible content in compliance with copyright. This gave indications on how to solve legal and copyright issues by drafting correct licenses between right holders (authors and publishers), intermediaries (technological providers and production and conversion suppliers) and end users (print impaired people, libraries).

Stemming from the above guidelines and work previously carried out in ORMEE and EUAIN, a number of training modules were prepared. These are targeted at content producers, and aim to provide a systematic framework where publishing professionals (both managers and technical staff) can gain practical insight on how to enrich the accessibility of their content.

Collaborative Approach

The methodology that underpinned all the project work was based on two tenets:
- a collaborative approach fostered among the different stakeholders
- a strict correlation between the creation of tools and the dissemination activities

The in-depth analysis of the value chain in content production allowed the project team to identify all the actors whose involvement was required in order effectively to tackle accessibility issues: content producers, suppliers, distributors, technological providers (including software houses), specialist organisations, libraries and print impaired people.

On this basis a truly collaborative approach could be implemented and this represents the added value of the project; creating mutual trust and confidence among all the different stakeholders, both from the content production and the accessibility perspectives, was one of the major achievements of the project. This ultimately served to promote more flexible and effective solutions to accessible content processing without waiting for a legislative solution that is difficult to design and implement.

The project consortium brought together partners that can effectively build a bridge between content production (and therefore content producers’ needs) and accessibility (and therefore the needs of print impaired people) and the project could benefit from their strong international relations and networks.

Future work

The project was conceived as part of a long term strategy; the creation of practical instruments, guidelines and training modules will ensure that project results will last beyond the project duration as they will be used, discussed, enriched and disseminated among/by stakeholders with the efforts of partners.

Partners will continue to inform members of their network in the most appropriate circumstances and further deepening solutions proposed in ProAccess tools. In particular the EUAIN Network will be used to enrich the results of ProAccess.

The project also created new networks of co-operation with organizations external to the consortium that will be exploited in follow-up projects to continue testing solutions for accessible content production.

In summary, the ProAccess project made it possible not only to identify key trends in accessible content processing but also to complement this knowledge with practical methods, approaches and guidelines, allowing these results to be disseminated among content producers, specialist organisations, end users thanks to the wide networks of our organizations.

Thanks to important innovations in technology it is now possible and easier to produce content that can be adapted more easily to accessible formats within mainstream environments. To fully exploit these opportunities, a strong effort should be made to promote awareness and mutual knowledge among software companies, content producers and specialist/disabled people organisations; sustain analysis and studies for integrating the production processes with accessibility options; provide specialized training to professionals operating in the publishing sector, exploring sustainability of new business models, ensuring that prerogatives of copyright holders are considered in a correct perspective.

ProAccess was intended to be a first step in this direction and it is hoped that further initiatives will stem from this work and help move us towards an inclusive society.

If you are interested in the ProAccess work and Deliverables from the project please register as a user and you can then download the documents from the Documentation page.