Personalization in the Interactive EPUB 3 Reading Experience: Accessibility Issues for Screen Reader Users
Barbara Leporini, Clara Meattini · 2019 · Proceedings of the 16th International Web for All Conference (W4A) · doi:10.1145/3315002.3317564
Summary
This paper investigates the accessibility of interactive EPUB 3 digital books when accessed via screen readers. The authors designed and developed a multimedia, interactive EPUB 3 prototype — a digital guide to Sienese cuisine featuring 8 recipe chapters and 8 walking itinerary chapters — to test how well reading applications and screen reading assistive technology handle interactive features. The prototype was built using Sigil (an open-source EPUB editor) with HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, and WAI-ARIA techniques, and included several personalization features: an interactive index linking dishes to related walks, audio descriptions in 3D sound, on-demand additional details via dynamic content blocks, visual rendering preferences (background color and dyslexia-friendly font selection via checkboxes), personalized allergen alert messages based on food intolerance preferences, and map instructions with textual directions for walking itineraries. The interactive features were implemented using standard HTML form elements (checkboxes, buttons), JavaScript event handlers (onclick, onload), and dynamic div blocks with aria-live, aria-atomic, and aria-relevant properties to ensure screen reader announcement of dynamically updated content. The prototype passed automated validation using EPUBCheck and ACE (Accessibility Checker for EPUB). The evaluation was then conducted as an inspection test by three sighted experts and three blind screen reader users experienced with eBooks, testing across multiple platforms: Adobe Digital Edition (ADE) on Windows PCs, ADE on iOS, Apple Books on iOS, and Voice Dream on iOS.
Key findings
The evaluation revealed a significant gap between what reading applications support without assistive technology and what is accessible via screen reader. Without screen readers, most reading applications handled the interactive EPUB 3 content properly — buttons, checkboxes, dynamic content, and multimedia all functioned correctly. However, when screen readers were activated, numerous accessibility issues emerged across all tested applications. The core problems included: checkboxes and buttons were detected only as plain text with no information about element type or selection status; links were not detected by screen readers so related content could not be activated; dynamic content updates were not announced despite WAI-ARIA live region properties being applied; and keyboard activation of interactive elements often failed (e.g., spacebar triggered page navigation instead of element selection). A summary table showed that with screen reader support, most interactive features (audio, links, buttons, checkboxes, dynamic content) failed or were only partially supported across ADE with screen reader, Books with VoiceOver, and Voice Dream. The authors tested WAI-ARIA solutions to address these issues — adding role="checkbox", labelledby attributes, and hidden descriptive spans — which improved screen reader interpretation on some platforms but not consistently across all. The fundamental problem identified is that reading applications do not fully expose EPUB HTML elements to assistive technology APIs the way web browsers do, even though EPUB 3 is based on HTML5.
Relevance
This research exposes a critical gap in digital publishing accessibility that affects millions of screen reader users. While EPUB 3 is built on HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript — technologies for which robust accessibility guidelines and screen reader support exist in web browsers — the reading applications that render EPUB content do not consistently pass semantic information to assistive technology APIs. This means that an EPUB document can be technically compliant with accessibility standards yet remain effectively inaccessible to blind users. For accessibility practitioners, this is an important cautionary finding: automated validation tools like EPUBCheck and ACE confirmed the prototype was accessible, but real-world screen reader testing revealed extensive barriers. The paper's detailed documentation of which features work on which platform-application-screen reader combinations is valuable reference material for anyone developing accessible digital publications. The suggestions for reading application developers — that apps should exploit standard HTML rendering engines and expose proper semantics to assistive technology — point to a systemic issue requiring industry-level coordination between EPUB tool developers and assistive technology vendors. The personalization features demonstrated (allergen alerts, dyslexia fonts, audio descriptions) also show how interactive EPUB can go beyond static text to create genuinely personalized accessible reading experiences, once the underlying platform support catches up.
Tags: EPUB · accessible publishing · screen reader · digital books · personalization · WAI-ARIA · visual impairment · assistive technology · VoiceOver · JAWS
Standards referenced: WCAG 2.1 · WAI-ARIA 1.1 · EPUB 3 · HTML5