ECW Press is excited to announce that they have been awarded Benetech's Global Certified Accessible™ (GCA) certification. This means that all ECW Press ebooks are screen reader friendly and built to meet the needs of those who are unable to read standard print due to blindness, low vision, dyslexia, or a physical disability. ECW Press is now one of two publishers in Canada that are certified, and only a handful in North America.
Ebooks published under ECW's trade catalogue are now created through their certified Born Accessible production process and include features such as structured navigation and headings, embedded print book edition page numbering, described images, and built-in discovery data to describe each book's accessibility features.
With more and more readers accessing books online, “accessible content has become a priority for our production team – the technology exists now and that’s a super exciting opportunity,” says Jessica Albert, digital and art director at ECW Press. “This certification process was extensive and represents years of valuable behind-the-scenes work learning new processes and systems. We’re so honored to join the still-small but growing ranks of certified accessible publishers.”
This certification follows ECW’s ongoing work as the leading audiobook publisher in Canada, another part of their commitment to providing equitable access to content. ECW produced 117 audiobooks last year, a record number for any Canadian company, almost all in accessible audio. They are on track to have 94% of their titles available in accessible audio in 2021. The press also offers the ebook for free with the purchase of a print or audiobook from any retailer as part of their long-running free ebook program.
You can find a full list of certified accessible publishers here.
You can find all ECW ebooks that have been published in an accessible format here.
To request a comment or interview please contact Susannah Ames, susannah@ecwpress.com
About Benetech’s Global Certified Accessible™ (GCA) certification: This is the first-ever 3rd party international program to certify the accessibility of ebooks, which is particularly critical in today’s education market. Benetech’s GCA certification has an ambitious goal – to help publishers build born accessible content to ensure that everyone has equal access to materials critical for all readers and learners.