As the publishing industry takes a serious look at its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) issues, accessibility has become a frequent topic of conversation. Our March keynote speaker, Laura Brady, has long been at the forefront of that discussion. In her post Producing Accessible Ebooks, Laura notes that “Fifteen percent of the world’s population uses assistive technology because of a disability. Eighty-five percent of the non-disabled market has a situational disability.” What does this mean for publishing? What is accessibility and why is it important? How is it implemented and how are we doing with that implementation? This discussion will guide us in getting up to speed so we can all be part of the conversation moving forward.

Laura Brady is an accessibility expert whose priority is to always put users first. She is head of accessibility at Legible Inc., a browser-based reading system, bringing more than 25 years of trade publishing experience to this role. For the past fifteen years, Laura has worked in digital publishing, where she has created and converted ebooks, trained publishers on accessible workflows, written a blog helping developers work more accessibly, and consulted for services organizations that want to publish more inclusively.

A sought-after consultant, trainer, and public speaker, Laura advocates with government funders, accessible library organizations, and publisher associations for disability issues. Laura is also active in sharing knowledge, building communities, and calling stakeholders in through community groups such as #eprdctn, the Accessible Publishing Summit, and ebookcraft, in addition to serving on the eBound and Accessible Books Consortium’s board of directors. Laura is widely recognized as one of the world’s experts in ebook accessibility and has created accessible poetry, first languages, math, and children’s books, along with others. In her free time, Laura reads books and loves dogs. She hasn’t mastered doing both at once.

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