BIC Brunches 2024

#bicbrunch

European Accessibility Act: Metadata
Overview

BIC Brunches are a series of live webinars which have been created for BIC members and non-members to attend to discuss book industry supply chain topics (including issues, successes, and challenges). Each BIC Brunch session is dedicated to one key area of the supply chain, offering attendees a unique opportunity to gather knowledge about that topic from experts in the field.

Introduction

Join us in this, the second session of our brand-new series of webinars dedicated to Accessibility, which we’ve put together with the 2025 European Accessibility Act (EAA) firmly in mind. This follows on from our incredibly well received launch session in July 2024 which took us back to the basics with a look at the legalities. The recording of July’s session is available exclusively to staff at BIC member organisations only via info@bic.org.uk

In this second session we’ll be exploring the EAA requirements in light of what they mean for digital/eBooks both in terms the data contained within the ePub file and also the metadata created and distributed throughout the book industry supply chain via ONIX.

Our expert speakers will guide us through metadata workflows, ePub schema metadata, and give us a quick tour of the W3C User Experience Guide for Displaying Accessibility Metadata.

We’ll hear helpful hints and tips on how to approach your frontlist, how to identify, and update backlist metadata, the practicalities of the process of doing this, and the importance of communications and setting expectations with all supply chain actors/trading partners.

We will be hosting separate sessions dedicated to i) the requirements for displaying accessibility information on vendor platforms, and ii) a deeper dive into the accessibility requirements when it comes to the content of ePub files, PDF’s etc. September’s session is all about the metadata.

So, if you’re looking for advice from industry experts on how to tackle the EAA in terms of metadata requirements, join us on 5th September for the second session of our BIC Brunch: Accessibility series.

If you have any specific questions you would like addressed at the webinar please send details to info@bic.org.uk.

Host

• Karina Urquhart, Executive Director, BIC

Speakers

• John Bell, Publishing Systems Manager, HarperCollins, UK
• Wendy Reid, Accessibility and Publishing Standards Lead at Rakuten Kobo Inc.
• Chris Saynor, Standards Editor, EDItEUR

Who should attend?

This event will be of interest to those concerend with complying with the EU Accessiblity Act, particulraly when it comes to the creation, updating, sending and receiveing of the metadata for digital books/ebooks.

The EU Accessibitly Act will have a far reaching impact on the book industry supply chain and so this session will be of interest to anyone working in the book publishing world including publishers, vendors, content creators, and in particluar metadata specialists and system providers.

Registration

Tickets are FREE for BIC members – non-members are asked to pay a nominal fee.
To register, scroll to the top of this webpage and click on the ‘Get Tickets’ button.
Not sure if your organisation is a BIC member? View our members list here.

Future Accessibility BIC Brunch sesssions

There are currently 6 further BIC Brunch sessions planned that will explore specific topics with regards to the EU Accessibility Act and they include:

• Back to Basics – the Legalities (held in July 2024 recording available on request via info@bic.org.uk – exclusively for BIC members only)
• eBooks & PDFs – October 2024
• Websites/Platforms – December 2024
• Digital Audio – January 2025
• Fixed Layout/PDF – February 2025
• DRM, Text-to-Speech and Accessibility – March 2025

Can’t make it?

If you would like to attend this event but cannot for any reason, you can watch our BIC Brunch and Green BIC Brunch sessions via the BIC YouTube channel. One month after the live event, the footage will be uploaded to the channel.

Attendees will have access to the recording more quickly: Within a few days of the live event.

Also, if you’re unable to attend this event but have a question for one of our speakers then do get in touch. Either tweet at @BIC1UK using hashtag: #bicbrunch (before or during the event) or contact us at info@bic.org.uk (prior to the event) to have your question put to our speakers.

If you would like to remain informed about all of BIC’s forthcoming events, including our BIC Brunch sessions, join BIC’s mailing list.

We look forward to seeing you!