Gregorio Pellegrino

The European Accessibility Act has already driven a major shift: European publishers are now producing accessible ebooks with machine-readable accessibility metadata. The EPUB Accessibility 1.2 standard underpins this compliance. The next frontier is Fixed Layout EPUBs — comics, children's books, educational materials. Early results show publishers and reading system developers are already implementing guidance from the forthcoming Fixed Layout guidelines with promising outcomes. As reading systems develop accessible reading features for Fixed Layout content, the entire ecosystem benefits; SMEs avoid costly country-specific adaptations; educational publishers meet inclusive education requirements, unlocking cross-border distribution of accessible content to millions of European readers with disabilities.