Appendix B: Definitions List

Alternative Text which can be picked up by assistive technology describing the image for those who are unable to visually see the image.

Any item, piece of equipment, or product system, whether acquired commercially off the shelf, modified, or customized, that is used to increase, maintain, or improve functional capabilities of individuals with disabilities.

CCTV stands for closed-circuit television and is commonly known as video surveillance. “Closed-circuit” means broadcasts are usually transmitted to a limited (closed) number of monitors, unlike “regular” TV, which is broadcast to the public at large.

A book composed in or converted to digital format for display on a computer screen or handheld device.

[file extension .epub] – EPUB is an e-book file format considered to be the industry standard for digital books. EPUB is supported by many e-readers, and compatible software is available for most smartphones, tablets, and computers. EPUB is a technical standard originally published by the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF), and currently is being worked on in the W3C with the next version 3.3 due out in 2023.

Benetech’s GCA certification is the first-ever independent third-party digital accessibility certification program. Our goal is to help publishers build born accessible content that meets the needs of all readers. The program accomplishes this by helping adjust publisher workflows to ensure that content they produce is accessible from the start. Certified publishers receive a GCA seal and associated metadata they can include in EPUB files produced by their certified workflows.

When a Reading System adds a book to its internal library.

These are interchangeable, and both mean a description, usually of an image, that goes beyond the simple alttext description of the image that further explains more complex images, tables, graphs, etc. For example, if there was an image of a line chart, the alttext might read “Line chart of all 2022 Ford car sales.” Whereas its long/extended description might be a table of the various Ford car models and trim levels with their number of sales and average pricing information.

OCR stands for "Optical Character Recognition." It is a technology that recognizes text within a digital image. It is commonly used to recognize text in scanned documents and images. OCR software can be used to convert a physical paper document, or an image into an accessible electronic version with text.

[file extension .pdf] – Used in the exact visual rendering of a book primarily used to create the print book itself.

[file extension .pdf] – An enhanced PDF that is semantically tagged to improve the accessibility of the original PDF.

Noun. When used as an adjective, the word should be hyphenated, e.g., print-disabled person. A person who cannot effectively read print because of a visual, physical, perceptual, developmental, cognitive, or learning disability.

A Protected EPUB is one that has DRM (Digital Rights Management) which could lock the EPUB from only working on a given reading environment and would not be allowed to be shared with others.

Software that will convert digital text into speech using TTS (Text to Speech) and essentially read to the user.  TTS voices have improved dramatically over the past decade and are sounding incredibly like real human speech.

A combination of hardware and/or software that accepts digital Publications and makes them available to consumers of the content. 

A Reading System that can ingest a non-protected EPUB to be added to that Reading System’s internal library which one would have access to then read. For Example, the EPUBTest.org’s test books need to be side loaded to test that reading system’s accessibility.

Shortcut and Hotkey

Key combinations when pressed together at the same time perform a predetermined action.  Normally people will hold down a control key and then press the mnemonic character, e.g., shortcut key combination (CTRL +s) to save a document. “VO+” VoiceOver Hotkey modifier (typically Caps Lock or Command + Option).

Text to speech (TTS) is a form of speech synthesis that converts text on a page into spoken voice output.

WCAG 2.0 covers a wide range of recommendations for making Web content more accessible. Following these guidelines will make content accessible to a wider range of people with disabilities, including blindness and low vision, deafness and hearing loss, learning disabilities, cognitive limitations, limited movement, speech disabilities, photosensitivity, and combinations of these. Following these guidelines will also often make your Web content more usable to users in general.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international community where Member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop Web standards.