We received 2 pieces of good news last month.
The first is that IPEd’s free guide to accessible publishing, Books without barriers, is now featured on the International Publishers Association (IPA) website. It forms part of the IPA’s 1000 Actions campaign, which is designed to inspire and mobilise the publishing sector to take concrete steps towards achieving the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. Each action represents an initiative that demonstrates how the publishing sector is working towards creating a more sustainable, equitable and prosperous world.
More information on the 1000 Actions campaign is available on the IPA SDG Dashboard.
The second piece of very welcome news is that the Australian Publishers Association (APA) has now changed its house style from single to double quotation marks, modelling the best practice principles set out in Books without barriers. (The industry newsletter Books+Publishing also made this change last year, once its editors became aware of the accessibility problems caused by single quotation marks.)
In published materials, single quotation marks are typically represented by apostrophes, causing huge headaches for braille transcribers. While these 2 symbols may look the same visually, and are generated by the same key on a conventional keyboard, apostrophes and quotation marks have distinct braille codes – and significantly different meanings. As you can imagine, encountering the wrong one can cause a lot of confusion for braille users, so transcribers need to be very careful that the correct code is used in every instance.
“Why can’t this process be automated?”, you may ask (using double quote marks of course). Unfortunately, many of the file formats in which alternative-format providers receive books for transcription don’t support the use of find-and-replace macros to convert apostrophes accurately into quotation marks. For example, the macro may also remove legitimate apostrophes in contractions such as can’t or won’t, which then have to be reinstated manually. The file conversion process also sometimes changes single opening quotation marks used with text in serifed fonts into another letter, such as a “p” or a “t”.
When single quotation marks are used as the default style, braille transcribers and proofreaders are forced to manually check every single apostrophe and quotation mark in the text. In books that include a lot of dialogue, slang in quote marks, contractions or dropped consonants in reported speech (I’m goin’, ’e went), the workload to correct this can be enormous. The disability organisation NextSense estimates that transcribers and proofreaders can spend up to a whopping one-third of their time checking and correcting these punctuation marks alone. For not-for-profit organisations supported by donations, this is a drain on precious resources that could be far better spent elsewhere.
The problem doesn’t impact only braille users. Single quotation marks misrepresented as apostrophes pose challenges for people who use screen readers too. When screen readers encounter an apostrophe at the beginning or end of a word, they often say “apostrophe” out loud. If you think about how many times this could happen in a dialogue-heavy novel, for example, you can imagine how much it would disrupt a reader’s enjoyment of the story.
While IPEd has been campaigning for change since the first edition of Books without barriers was published in 2023, the Australian Government has so far declined to change its advice on quotation marks in the Style manual. But that doesn’t mean editors have to follow its example.
Both IPEd and the APA recommend that all Australian publishers, editors and writers move to adopt double quotation marks as their standard style. These marks:
- reduce the workload and error risk for braille transcribers
- improve readability for people with low vision
- avoid accessibility issues for screen-reader users
- have no negative impact on comprehension for sighted readers.
Making this small change can have a substantial effect on inclusion and access for people living with vision impairment. Meanwhile, it’s quite likely that most other readers won’t even notice the difference.
To find out more about accessible editing and publishing, join me and Agata Mrva-Montoya for 2 lunchtime webinars:
- Wednesday 14 October: Developing accessible content
- Monday 16 November: Designing and producing accessible books
This is an expanded version of an article that first appeared in APA News.