I work and write a lot about digital accessibility nowadays. And as a writer, accessible e-books came up recently. Of course they have to meet the same criteria as every digital product. Well … almost.
Let me introduce you to the few criteria to create an accessible e-book.
Accessibility Act
In June 2025 the global accessibility act became effective. It enforces every product to be accessible. This also includes digital products like websites, apps and e-books. Therefore every new e-book has to fulfill this act.
Except for small businesses (the exact definition might differ for every country or even district). In the case of e-books, self-publishers earning less than one million euro are not affected.
But enforced or not, everybody should aim for accessible products to include all potential readers out there and improve their books metadata and readability for everybod.
Format
E-books come in different file-formats, ePub and mobi.
ePub exists in version 2 and 3, whereas mobi is a file format exclusively used by amazon to distribute to kindle. Neither ePub2 nor mobi are accessible. These formats do not support the metadata needed to create an accessible product. Even amazon has switched to ePub3. Alas there are still many e-books in ePub2 and mobi out there, that are not enforced to be updated.
Every new e-book must use ePub3 at least to meet the accessibility criteria.
Meta-Data
Besides well-known meta-data like author, publisher and dates, there are additional accessibility meta-data. They help telling people with disabilities or assisting tools to detect whether an e-book is save to consume or even readable despite barriers.
These meta-data can be added programmatically with a bit of research. Most e-book publishing tools or event the distributors offer a function to enter these data by simple answering some simple questions. Like type of content, dynamic content or heavy use of images or interactive elements. And that’s it.
Alternative Texts
When using images, there has to be an alternative text. This text is read by automated tools and should transport the same information the image does. Illustration should contain a firm description of the image, not more than 200 characters and ending with a period.
It’s more complicated for complex graphics and graphs. Here a transcript or full descriptive text should be available nearby.
There is also the possibility of decorative images without further information. Here the alt-text attribute can be left empty to convey the informative nature to a tool.
Alternative texts must not contain the information, that this is an image. The reading tool will add this itself.
Structure
On the bottom, an e-book is no less than a very simple HTML-file. It has normal text and structures. These structures should be formatted according to their type.
Headings
Chapter headings must use a heading format to be detectable. Most writing tools build the table of content by detecting these headings. Headings have a hierarchy that must be followed. So do not pack a h3/heading level 3 directly unter an h1/heading level 1.
Also headings should hint at the information or text that follows below and must not be used “because the formatting looks cool for this quote”.
Lists, tables and thereabouts
More common for non-fiction, but there might be lists and tables inside the text. This should be formatted as such. Lines with a dash in front might look like a semantically correct list, but they aren’t. A screenreader will announce a list and the number of entries, before going trough them one by one. Also, avoid lists with just one entry.
Contrast
When using images or colored text – but even when designing the cover, the contrast between background and text (or readable graphic) must be high enough. That is 4,5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text. If the contrast is not met, for some people the text will not be readable, because back- and foreground will melt into each other.
To check for the contrast, use a contrast checker like the webaim contrast checker.
Tools
As most of the time, there are numerous tools to check for an e-books accessibility. Distributor might have their own version implemented. I have use two tools by now to check my e-books for accessibility. They are both free and easy to use.
EPUB-Checker
First one is the pagina EPUB-checker. Not optimized for accessibility, but it will spot incorrect files, like image file-paths with umlauts.
Ace by Daisy
The ace library is used across several medias and here is one tool for e-books.
Ace by Daisy offers a software that might need a few tries to load your ePub-file but then presents you with a report containing all your accessibility failures and successes. Including your headline hierarchy, alternative texts and meta-data.
My e-books are now accessible, thanks to a day of research and my distributor who let me add all the meta-data and alt-text that scrivener was unable to edit. Please let me know about your experience with other tools and distributors.
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