the alt text specialists
The Taylor & Francis Story
1 February, 2021
Taylor & Francis is dedicated to improving the accessibility of our products and ensuring our customers have the best experience when accessing content. The helpful guidance and scoring criteria provided by ASPIRE have helped us fulfil increased visibility and transparency within our accessibility publishing programme.
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Taylor & Francis launched an Accessibility Working Group (AWG) in February 2019, in the context of changing legal and customer requirements that touched all aspects of our publishing landscape: books, journals, and websites.
Our approach is to ensure that our products and websites are optimised to be compatible with assistive technologies.
We have been working to fulfil our goal of disseminating knowledge in formats that are accessible to all. Our approach is to ensure that our products and websites are optimised to be compatible with assistive technologies. We recognize the need to communicate our commitment, current offerings, and goals to the accessibility community and welcome the work of ASPIRE in aiding us with this objective.
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Since launch, the AWG has developed a deep understanding of the legal framework for accessibility; launched an Alternative Text creation trial on both books and journals; and improved our eBook specifications quarterly to ensure they provide the best functionality to those with a visual or print impairment. Work has also been completed to test ePub for Journals and upgrade our article PDF specification. Similarly, we are working tirelessly to ensure our eBook and Journals platforms are both accessible.
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Our Accessibility Statement launched in December 2019 to improve the visibility of our efforts and affirm our commitment to customers and our dedication to improving our products.
Our visual impairment program (VIP) service provides alternative format requests to customers and institutions who require digital access to content to support those with a visual or print impairments. The VIP team supplied more than 2,000 eBooks on request to individuals and institutions in 2020. We also work closely with key advocates of accessibility, including BookShare in the USA and Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) in the UK.
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We have more work to do, so customers can expect further changes as we evolve our platforms and products to provide more detailed accessibility metadata and the improved and increased use of alt text and accessibility features within our products.
