Standards - UK Association for Accessible formats

Standards Braille

Introduction

UKAAF publishes a wide range of standards, guidance and articles in support of braille users and transcribers. The Unified English Braille publications listed below are the most up-to-date information on braille standards and the primary source of information to use.

Unified English Braille (UEB) is a braille code developed by the International Council on English Braille (ICEB) to bring together several existing Braille codes into one unified code. In October 2011, UKAAF decided to adopt UEB as the official braille code in the United Kingdom. UKAAF is working to facilitate the transition from Standard English Braille (SEB) to UEB.

On this page you will find a summary of UKAAF-originated documents and standards. Documents or standards produced by other bodies such as RNIB, ICEB etc, are listed on UKAAF’s dedicated UEB page.

UKAAF is the UK representative body for the International Council on English Braille (ICEB). The ICEB is responsible for developing Unified English Braille (UEB), used in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Nigeria and South Africa. UKAAF’s Braille subject area is very active and regularly participates in ICEB meetings.

Standards Large Print

UKAAF’s Clear and Large Print subject group oversees standards and addresses any issues relating to this format. In volume terms, clear and large print are probably the most commonly requested hard copy format in the UK.

Unlike some other subject areas, particularly braille, this subject area generally lacks any internationally recognised standards. It is therefore important, given the formats popularity, to try to ensure that the needs of vision impaired users are properly understood and addressed so that poor quality solutions such as enlarging originals on photocopiers are not used.

In addition to maintaining its clear and large print standards UKAAF therefore attempts to publicise and encourage their use.

Publications

MS03 UKAAF Minimum standards Clear and large print PDF
G003 UKAAF Creating clear print and large print documents PDF

MS03 UKAAF Minimum standards Clear and large print
G003 UKAAF Creating clear print and large print documents

Subject Experts

Standards PDF

Introduced by Adobe Systems in 1993, Portable Document Format (PDF) is widely used for publishing and reading digital documents and became an ISO standard in 2008. PDF/UA (Universal Accessibility) is a revision of the PDF standard that defines guidelines for making PDF documents accessible and became an ISO Standard in July 2012 (updated in 2014). PDF/UA is referenced by the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0.

PDF/UA includes several features in support of accessibility the core of which is the ability to determine the logical order of content in a PDF document, independently of the content’s appearance or layout, through tags. Hence the term tagged PDF. This makes it possible for an assistive technology like web browsers to read a PDF out loud, reflow it for a small screen and facilitate users who rely on the keyboard control.

PDF has the benefit that it can faithfully render printed material on a digital devices and on print media. PDF/UA ensures that documents are fully accessible when they use the guidelines, however, there are still many examples of bad PDF that fail to reach accessible standards.

UKAAF’s aim is to ensure that PDF/UA is adopted successfully in the UK market in industries such as publishing, government, healthcare, financial services and utilities.

UKAAF is a strategic partner of the PDF Association and provides guidance to the UK market on how to leverage the PDF/UA specification for producing high quality digitally accessible documents.

Publications

MS04 UKAAF Min standards Accessible PDF for Assessments PDF
G019 Accessible PDF for Assessment PDF
G018 Guidance for the Production of Source Documents For Transcription PDF

MS04 UKAAF Min standards Accessible PDF for Assessments

MS04 UKAAF Min standards Accessible PDF for Assessments
G019 Accessible PDF for Assessment
G018 Guidance for the Production of Source Documents For Transcription

Useful Links

PDF Techniques for WCAG, W3C
ISO 32000-1:2008, ISO
PDF 1.7, Adobe
ISO 14289-1:2014, ISO
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 ISO/IEC 40500:2012

Subject Experts

Standards Office Documents

To help make these documents accessible, UKAAF has drafted accessibility guidelines to
assist users when creating them within Google and Microsoft office software.

Microsoft Office is a family of client software, server software, and services developed by
Microsoft comprising of Word, Excel and PowerPoint with reportedly over 1 billion users
worldwide.

G Suite is a set of cloud computing, productivity and collaboration tools, software and
products developed by Google comprising of Docs, Sheets and Slides as well as a handful of
other tools including GMail with reportedly over 4 million paying businesses and over 70
million education based users worldwide.

UKAAF has no official partnerships with Microsoft or Google at this time

Google Docs
Google Slides
Microsoft Word
Microsoft Excel

Subject Experts

Jeff Mills

Standards Audio

Many blind and partially sighted people choose to read material in audio form, even if they can read Braille or large print.

In addition to commercially available audio books, specialised material where structure is important, such as academic, scientific, cookery or any material where effective navigation of the text is needed, can be transcribed into audio using the DAISY standard.

If you need to create an audio version of information, from a letter, flier or leaflet to a complete book, then UKAAF has agreed minimum standards and guidance on Audio Recording Techniques, Presentation Skills and Reading Skills. Links to each of these are provided below.

Publications

DOCX

MS01 UKAAF Minimum Standards Audio July 2017
G010 UKAAF Audio recording techniques July 2017
G011 UKAAF Audio presentation skills July 2017
G012 UKAAF Audio reading skills July 2017

Useful Links

Subject Experts

Standards Accessible Images

The subject of accessible images is wide and diverse with many advances having been made during the last few years, not forgetting existing solutions. Tactile and large print Images, maps and diagrams are widely used within education, for plans of buildings and the external environment. The world of publishing, is also embracing provision and finding ways of incorporating this into workflows.

Our aim is to work and influence provision, direct people to where resources exist and connect with organisations in other countries making similar provision.

One area where we are working in partnership with RNIB is to provide a new ‘Sign Design Guide’, now twenty years old, with an updated and expanded publication, ‘Guide to Accessible Signage’.

Formerly, UKAAF has not produced its own guidance on tactile graphics but contributed to the comprehensive document produced by BANA (The Braille authority of North America) which is available for free download from their website http://www.brailleauthority.org/tg/

Accessible Images document archive

G021 UKAAF Describing images 6: Large Print

Useful Links

Diagram Center
3WC Image Concepts
Text Box Digital

Subject Experts

Standards HTML

HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is the most basic building block of the Web. It defines the meaning and structure of web content. Other technologies besides HTML are generally used to describe a web page’s appearance/presentation (CSS) or functionality/behaviour (JavaScript). Web content can be made accessible just by making sure the correct Hypertext Markup Language elements are used for the correct purpose. The HTML standard is developed and published by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

WAI-ARIA is a specification written by the W3C, defining a set of additional HTML attributes that can be applied to elements to provide additional semantics and improve accessibility wherever it is lacking, for example for user interface controls that involve un-semantic HTML and dynamic Javascript.

UKAAF has no formal relationship directly with the W3C, but we retain connections through our work with the Daisy Consortium.

Subject Experts

Jeff Mills

Standards EPUB

EPUB is the standard for digital e-books and publications developed by the publishing industry. It is used around the world for education and leisure books, journals, and other publications. Of particular note is how reflowable EPUB adjusts the display to fit the available space, benefiting people with the small screens of mobile devices, and people reading with large text. The EPUB format is based on open standards that include W3C’s HTML. It benefits from extensive compatibility with assistive technologies, and an accessibility specification leveraging the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).

UKAAF’s aim is to ensure that EPUB standards are widely understood and adopted in the UK market, particularly in the publishing and education sectors. We aim to work closely with the DAISY Consortium to ensure that this standard is widely understood and adopted.

Useful Links

EPUB accessibility specification
Accessible Publishing Knowledge Base
Accessibility Checker for EPUB (ACE)
Inclusive Publishing website

Subject Experts

Richard Orme