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The National Library for the Disabled announces the Korean Standard for E-book Accessibility

Department International Cooperation and PR Team
Registration Date 2024-06-23
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The National Library for the Disabled announces the Korean Standard for E-book Accessibility

The National Library for the disabled=

On January 22, the National Library for the Disabled (Director General Won Jong-pil) announced the introduction of the Korean Standard for E-book Accessibility as part of its efforts to ensure equitable access to e-books for disabled individuals.1)

While web accessibility is designed to ensure that online resources and tools are accessible for disabled individuals, the Korean Standard for E-book Accessibility allows disabled individuals to use e-books without barriers despite their disabilities.

In addition to this standard, the library has been making ongoing efforts to increase the accessibility of e-books, including through the establishment of the TTAS (Telecommunications Technology Association Standard) on accessibility in 2016 and EPUB Accessibility for Print-disabled Persons: Part 1. Authoring Guidelines in 2022 (KS X 6201-1).

The standard consists of three stages based on the type of e-book and the complexity of editing. It defines a total of 115 items (75 general items and 40 sub-items).

	Characteristics	Items (Example)
Category 1	Text only e-books (E-books that do not have design elements, such as illustrations and tables)	The id attribute value is used to identify all titles.
Category 2	E-books that contain both text and images.	All tables are marked using the 'table' element.
Category 3	E-books that contain multimedia content, such as audio and video	Labels describing audio and video are included.

Table 1. Types of e-book and items checked in the Korean Standard for E-book Accessibility (Source: The National Library for the Disabled)

“Similarly to the web accessibility certification system, which examines and certifies the accessibility of websites, we are planning to introduce an e-book accessibility certification system based on this standard,” said an NLD librarian. For more details about the Korean Standard for E-book Accessibility, visit www.standard.go.kr.

(Source)

https://www.nld.go.kr/ableFront/press_release/view.jsp

1) Title: EPUB Accessibility for Print-disabled Persons: Part 2. Standards by Accessibility Level (KS X 6201-2).

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