Over the past few years, Orca Book Publishers has been working to create an accessible ebook program for children and teens, with the result that over 250 accessible ebooks are now available from the publisher’s existing book list. All new books published by Orca will be “born accessible,” which means that building accessible ebooks starts at the beginning of the book’s creation. As well, Orca is committed to an ongoing effort to bring the entire catalog up to accessible ebook standards. These accessible ebooks enrich the reading experience for children and teens who are blind, have low vision, are colour blind, have difficulty holding books or turning pages, are neurodivergent, or have dyslexia. Orca’s new accessible ebooks allow readers to: understand the content of images, graphics, and photos through detailed descriptions of images; navigate the text in multiple ways using the table of contents, hierarchical titles, and enhanced wayfinding structures; use page lists to match page numbers to print editions; reach the chosen part of the text using the index and start reading from the desired page; identify and read bulleted and numbered lists; customize text and layout, including background colour; screen reader and text-to-speech friendly, and discover the accessible aspects of the book through metadata.
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