How To Make Accessible Ibooks With Ibooks Author

Apple takes pride making sure its products and software is made for every user, including students and teachers in the classroom. iPads are being used more and more throughout the classroom. To assist with this, Apple, last year, launched iBooks Author. iBooks Author is a free app, available in the Mac App Store that allows users to create interactive iBooks.

In this accessibility segment, I will be discussing how to make create accessible iBooks using iBooks Author…

Apple makes inserting images and interactive review guides simple by either pressing on the media browser button or the widgets button.

However, by default, when you add in an image, chart, or review guide, they are not compatible to use with VoiceOver. VoiceOver is the built in screen reader that comes on the Macs and iOS devices, and it allows low-vision and legally blind users to be able to use these devices.

To make the media compatible with VoiceOver, you first click and select on the picture that you want to make compatible. Then you open up the Inspector (located in the upper right hand corner with a blue circle and a white i)

Once you have the Inspector open, tap on the Widget Inspector. The Widgets Inspector is the brown tab with a gear on it (all the way towards the right).

Navigate to the bottom area where it says Accessibility Description. Now in the box where it says Accessibility Description, I’m going to type in what the picture is. It is a picture of:

Since I added an Accessibility Description, VoiceOver will now read out loud:

To make the interactive review guides accessible, first you want to create a review guide by tapping on the Widgets button at the top in the menu bar. Then click Review. When you do that, it automatically opens up the Widgets Inspector filled with “Lorem Ipsum” text.

If you type in the question and answers in the review guide in the book, it automatically fills in the Accessibility Description in the Widget Inspector. Press Tab on the keyboard to save it and to fill out the next section.

Now if you were to do the review section in the book, VoiceOver will read out loud the review section.

Now you can make iBooks that you create in iBooks Author accessible.