To match the licenses of other content in the presentation, the PDF is available for download under a Creative Commons Non-Commercial ShareAlike.

There are a few videos in the presentation which I’ve pulled out separately:

Using an accessible HTML5-based EPUB with VoiceOver

This demonstrations uses The Restless Universe from The Open University with a screenreader. The publication (somewhere between EPUB 2 and EPUB 3) uses the HTML5 canvas element to present visualizations, and includes alternate versions for the visually-impaired. Though this demo was run on a computer, the EPUB works in iBooks. (Software tools to build these publications available at http://sourceforge.net/projects/bookbind/.)

For each example, I show the visual presentation first, then the alternate screenreader-friendly one.

Creating a screen-readable interactive publication with WAI-ARIA

WAI-ARIA roles and states are used here in this demo (running on Firefox, Windows XP, NVDA screenreader) showing that JavaScript-driven interactive publications can also be accessible.

You’ll be able to hear the screenreader announcing that the word “delighted” has a “submenu”. When I use the keyboard to navigate I can find the link-like region through the auditory landmarks, select it, and then hear the popup read to me. WIthout using the ARIA roles, such JavaScript-driven interactivity would be invisible to the screenreader. See the slides for more details on the ARIA markup used here.

Interactive storytelling for the blind

My presentation included an excerpt from the documentary Get Lamp by Jason Scott; the relevant bit begins here in this presentation at a Google Tech talk.

[Slides are now available]

The following is a list of talks that I’m either planning on attending personally or recommend, based on topic or speaker:

Workshops

This year’s workshop program is really strong. Attendees will not be disappointed by any of:

• EPUB Finishing Touches with Joshua Tallent.
• Standards in Flux with Bill Kasdorf et al.
• Designing iPad Apps with Jennifer Brook, William Couch, and Craig Mod. Craig’s thoughts on digital books are worth the price of admission.
• Two of my favorite people are presenting Metadata Boot Camp: Laura Dawson (now with Firebrand) and Adam Witwer (O’Reilly Media).
• I’m quite interested in HTML5: A Workshop for Publishers as it’s given by the author of the HTML5 Google Pac-Man, though I haven’t met him.

Sessions

Tuesday

• Is There Such a Thing as a Good Business Model for Publishing These Days? with Louis Rosenfeld (Rosenfeld Media, LLC), John Oakes (OR Books)
• Value-Added Apps: A Conversation with Top App Makers on How to Create Apps with Craft, Care and Polish with Neal Hoskins (WingedChariot), Gus Balbontin (Lonely Planet), Anil Dash (Activate), Michel Kripalani (Oceanhouse Media), Pete Myers (BirdsInTheHand, LLC). This is a really strong lineup.
• Data-driven Marketing and Product Development with Emily Sawtell (McGraw-Hill International Publishing Group), Brett Sandusky (Kaplan Publishing)
• Bookselling in the 21st Century with Kassia Krozser (Booksquare.com), Lori James (All Romance/OmniLit/ARe Cafe), Jenn Northington (WORD), Kevin Smokler (Booktour.com), Jessica Stockton-Bagnulo (Greenlight Bookstore), Malle Vallik (Harlequin Enterprises Ltd)
• All about EPUB3: An Update with Robert Kasher (Book Masters), Keith Fahlgren (Threepress) and others to be announced.
• eReading Survey Findings and Research: A Look behind the Numbers with Sarah Weinman (DailyFinance), Matthew Bernius (Open Publishing Lab at the Rochester Institute of Technology), Kelly Gallagher (RR Bowker), Peter Hildick-Smith (Codex-Group LLC), Jennifer Manning (Nielsen)
• From Startups to Publishing Companies Ripe for Expansion: What Are Investors in the Publishing Sector Looking For? with Jeff Shelstad (Flat World Knowledge), Linda Holliday (CEO Semi-Linear, Director New York Angels), Mark Jacobsen (O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures), Stephen Koenig (Interweave), Brian Rich (Catalyst Investors), Rick Richter (Ruckus Media). I run a publishing startup, so I may be more interested in this than you.

Wednesday

• What Do eReading Customers Really, Really Want? An In-depth, Research, and Data-driven Exploration of Reading Behavior, Content Consumption, and Consumer Attitudes Toward eReaders and Multifunction Devices with James Cathey (Qualcomm MEMS Technologies, Inc. ), Michael Tamblyn (Kobo). Any talk with Michael Tamblyn is worth attending.
• Solving the Digital Loan Problem: Can Library Lending of eBooks be a Win-win for Publishers AND Libraries? with Heather McCormack (Library Journal Magazine), Katie Dunneback (East Central Library Services), Ruth Liebmann (Random House, Inc.), Micah Bowers (Bluefire). This is a topic I’m particularly interested in right now.
• Open, Webby Book Publishing Systems with Hugh McGuire (LibriVox.org/Iambik.com/BookOven.com), Kirk Biglione (Oxford Media Works), John Maxwell (Simon Fraser University). All of the cool kids will be in this session.
• What’s in HTML5 for Publishers? with Philippe Le Hegaret (W3C).

Keynotes

Do not be caught schmoozing in the Exhibit Hall during these keynote speeches:

• The Condition of Music by James Bridle
• Making the Book Truly Accessible by Jim Fruchterman (Benetech)
• Context First: A Unified Field Theory of Publishing by Brian O’Leary. I have seen this talk and it is one of the best presentations in publishing you will ever see.

Anyone who’s ever been to a digital publishing conference knows that there is always a bewildering array of products that create and display enhanced content: ebooks that contain video, audio, animation, or other forms of interactivity. Generally each new platform requires an entirely different way of preparing the content and all the multimedia assets. While the production of static ebooks has become relatively standardized (using EPUB2), publishers are still struggling with how to produce more digital-native products without tremendous expense and constant re-tooling.

I’m optimistic that EPUB3 will provide significant headache-reduction in this area. While creating high-quality static, pure-text ebooks still has challenges, things are a lot better today than even a year ago. If we’re to see similar consolidation in the enhanced ebook space in the same timeframe, publishers are going to have to be firm that they will only (or at least primarily) produce standards-based multimedia books.

Slides from DBW

EPUB3 interactivity demo in iBooks

The talk includes a video demo. I had created an EPUB document several months ago for a research project, using Abroad by Thomas Crane as source material (edition from the Internet Archive). I wanted to emulate the accelerometer-driven animation of the Alice for iPad book using only the tools available in EPUB3.

Since the source was a heavily-illustrated children’s book, EPUB’s reflow capability was not really an asset. This quality made the book perfect for use in Apple’s fixed-layout mode. The video below shows the book running in iBooks on an iPad:

Accelerometer

In the first example, I use the accelerometer interface in JavaScript (some sample code), to cause the ship to “sail” back and forth as the user tilts the device.

Animation

In the second example, if the user touches any of the birds on the title page, they fly away. I modified the jQuery Path library to use CSS3 transforms to efficiently animate along a curve. JavaScript performance in iBooks appears to be somewhat worse than Mobile Safari; optimizing using CSS3 rather than DOM position updates is recommended.

Canvas, Processing.js, HTML5 audio

I’m a big fan of the Processing visual programming language. In the last example, the train appears to give off puffs of steam; each time the steam comes out of the train the puffs are in slightly different positions.

I embedded Processing.js code (which is itself then interpreted by JavaScript) and rendered the puffs to a transparent canvas. The puffs appear in a slightly random position, fade out as they reach the top of the page and then spawn anew.

Finally, there’s also an event bound to the invisible canvas: tapping on it will fire an HTML5 audio (a sample of a train).

(At this time we’re not able to share the demo EPUB file itself.)

Slides from EPUB Evolutions are posted but it may be more helpful to hear the full presentation, which I’ve re-recorded.

Topics covered in the talk include:

• The current state of the EPUB3 working groups and overall schedule.
• Enhancements to worldwide language support, including vertical text.
• Native multimedia and HTML5 video/audio.
• Interactivity, and the UI and accessibility challenges it imposes.
• Improved styling and layout via CSS3 and media-query.

Here’s the executive summary of the talk:

• You can add interactivity to an EPUB book using either the <object> or <script> elements.
• Currently object has the best support, especially using Flash in Adobe Digital Editions.
• The script element is specifically discouraged (though not disallowed) in EPUB 2.0.1, and no major reading system supports it. However, all browsers do!
• The primary advantage of interactivity using script is that the content creator has the ability to manipulate every part of the ebook: all of the text, its layout, even potentially the user interface of the reading system itself. With object you can apply interactivity to just an arbitrary rectangle.
• There is a great deal of interesting animation and even interactivity possible using CSS3, which is allowed in EPUB 2.0.1 and is supported by iBooks and other WebKit-based ereaders.
• Interactivity is also possible using JavaScript combined with the HTML5 canvas element, though canvas is not part of EPUB 2.0.1.
• With access to JavaScript on mobile devices, ebooks can potentially gain access to information about the reading device itself, such as the location of the reader in the physical world, or the device’s orientation, or even add photos and video from the device’s camera.
• Any ereader that allows JavaScript provides the ability for ebooks to access live data on the web.
• The primary blocker for extremely rich interactive ebooks is ereader support, but by embedding browser-based reading systems like Monocle, content creators can distribute such ebooks today.
• It remains to be worked out how to handle JavaScript in larger ereading systems both safely and with proper fallbacks to non-interactive content.

I’ll also be posting some of the example files used in the tutorial in a forthcoming post.

EPUB Enhanced, Interactive & Connected

eBook content authored in the IDPF EPUB standard is not limited to text and images. Publishers and developers are integrating into EPUB titles audio, video, animation, and a growing array of interactive educational content. This session will include updates to the EPUB standard and how readers will interact with eBooks utilized enhancements that take titles far beyond what print could ever offer.

I’ll also be around for the remainder of BEA and would be happy to meet up with people, especially other victims of the London ash-cloud who have been conference-deprived.

In the video you can enjoy the dramatic moment when the lights inexplicably dim and I think I’m being thrown off stage.

(Slides for ‘Designing ebooks for ePub reading engines’)

Update April 19, 2010: Like many others, I was unable to fly to London and will not be attending LBF.

Instead of becoming alarmed at the proliferation of ereaders and ebook softwares, designers and publishers should be thinking about the two dominant ePub reading engines: Adobe Mobile Reading SDK and WebKit.

This talk will help ebook producers understand what a reading engine is and how this framework can greatly simplify ebook crafting, design and testing.

Thanks to the folks at BookNet for providing me with the opportunity to speak and spend some quality time with some of my favorite Canadians.