Accessibility in FlippingBook Online

Accessibility is all about making your content accessible for everyone: for people with or without disabilities. In this article, we look into the following topics:

• What is accessibility, and why is it important?
• How to make an accessible flipbook?
• Are my flipbooks compliant with ADA section 508 / WCAG?

What is accessibility, and why is it important?

A substantial part of your audience has some sort of disability. This can make it more difficult or even impossible to access your content as easily as people without disabilities can.
For example, users with visual impairments often depend on high contrast to distinguish colors. Blind users frequently use screen reader software to read the contents of a web page out loud. Some users have difficulties using a mouse and instead use the keyboard or even touchscreens, head pointers, or other assistive devices. At FlippingBook, we do all we can so they can enjoy your content too.

There are lots of reasons to make your content accessible. It’s not just morally the right thing to do, but it also is the law in more and more countries. It also makes sense from a business perspective to cater to this group of people with disabilities.

How to make an accessible flipbook?

We have taken steps to improve the accessibility of your flipbooks but you will have to do some work from your end as well. To make flipbooks fully accessible, you will need to make sure that your content itself is accessible. To help you out, we have some tips that will greatly improve the accessibility of your PDFs in our article How to make your PDF more accessible.

If your PDF is sufficiently accessible, use our Accessibility feature to add it to your flipbook, so people can download and read it on a screen reader. Here are the steps you should follow to use this option:

1. Open the list of your flipbooks.
2. Hover over the flipbook you'd like to change and click the Customize option.
3. Choose Settings and the option Accessibility:
   
4. A new pop-up window is opened where you can choose the appropriate accessibility setting:
   • If the PDF you used to create your flipbook is compliant with the accessibility standards, you can offer it for download for people with disabilities without any changes. If this is your case, choose the option Original PDF:
     
   • If your original PDF wasn’t designed with accessibility in mind, or if you added additional content in FlippingBook Online with the content editor, then use the option Custom PDF. You can now select the accessible PDF that you created. For example, with an additional transcript of a video that you added to the flipbook version:
     
   • If your PDF was not designed with accessibility in mind and you don't have a custom accessible PDF either, we advise you to turn Off this feature.
5. Once you’ve chosen your accessible PDF version, press OK.

When the option Accessibility is on, your readers will see the Accessibility icon in the upper left corner of your flipbook interface, right next to the title:

They can use this icon to download and read the accessible PDF using accessibility features that are not natively supported in the flipbook format, such as reading aloud PDF contents by a screen reader.

Note! This won’t affect your flipbook and your original PDF will be available for Download from the bottom menu (in case you have the button Download switched on).

Are my flipbooks compliant with ADA section 508 / WCAG?

This is a difficult question to answer. We have done a lot to comply with these standards. But a lot depends on your PDF itself as well! That being said, if

• you have an accessible PDF;
• you provide it using the accessibility option; 
• you don't add any additional content like videos to your flipbook OR you make sure that such extra content is available in your accessible PDF; 
• be careful when modifying the background and color palette so there is enough contrast between the interface and the background;

then there are no barriers for anyone to access your content. Our interface (meaning everything except the pages) is ADA section 508/WCAG 2.1 AA compliant. The pages themselves are not fully compliant. Users who rely on assistive technology for the pages themselves will be able to easily download the accessible PDF.