VitalSource Technologies Inc., an Ingram Content Group Company and an educational technology company, is showcasing new accessibility features of its VitalSource Bookshelf platform at the National Federation of the Blind National Convention, July 5-10, in Orlando, FL. For more than a decade, VitalSource has provided accessible solutions to learners of all abilities, and was the first company to offer a reading system to support the emerging EDUPUB standard, which brings the benefits of accessible classroom materials into the integrated learning environment.
This year, VitalSource is expanding its accessibility agenda with new content, improved applications and increased collaboration with the accessibility community.
As part of last year's acquisition of CourseSmart, VitalSource is migrating all of CourseSmart's accessible PDF content to the VitalSource platform by mid-August, including content that was enhanced through the Student E-rent Pilot Project (STEPP). Funded by a US Department of Education grant, in partnership with the Alternative Media Access Center (AMAC), this project will remediate more than 1,000 leading textbook titles requested by students and instructors with print disabilities. This ever-growing collection, combined with more than 200,000 titles in the highly accessible EPUB format, ensures that VitalSource offers the largest catalogue of accessible educational content available today. VitalSource further strives to lead the market towards wider availability of accessible content by continually educating publishers about accessibility best practices.
VitalSource has also announced new updates to its desktop and mobile applications, all of which provide greater support for assistive technologies interacting with EPUB and PDF content. Additionally, VitalSource is supporting user-added EPUB content in its downloadable apps, providing access for assistive technologies to a wide range of Open Education Resources (OER) and other content sources.
VitalSource is continuing more than a decade of involvement in accessibility issues by actively participating in the Center for Accessible Materials Innovation (CAMI), funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Education. (http://cami.gatech.edu/). VitalSource also regularly collaborates with independent consultants and industry experts including the National Federation of the Blind (NFB), American Foundation for the Blind (AFB), Tech For All, JISC, Alternative Media Access Center (AMAC), and others. With the help of these experts, VitalSource strives to ensure its platform conforms to applicable accessibility standards including Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act and the Accessibility Guidelines established by the Worldwide Web Consortium known as WCAG 2.0. The state of the platforms' conformance with Section 508 at any point in time is made available through publication of Voluntary Product Accessibility Templates (VPATs).
VitalSource continues to support industry standards for accessibility by conducting conformance testing on all Bookshelf platforms – offline on Windows and Macs; online on Windows and Macs using standard browsers (e.g., Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Safari); and on mobile devices for iOS and Android. All Bookshelf platforms are evaluated using industry-leading screen reading programs available for the platform including JAWS and NVDA for Windows, VoiceOver for Mac and iOS, and TalkBack for Android. To ensure a comprehensive reading experience, all Bookshelf platforms have been evaluated using EPUB® and enhanced PDF books.
