How to make your flipbooks accessible in Flipsnack

Flipsnack is continuously working to ensure it provides accessible publishing solutions for your readers. Learn how to enable Accessibility for your publications.

We've taken important steps to ensure that our platform—website, player, and flipbooks—is accessible to everyone. Flipsnack guarantees flipbook accessibility for all readers, enabling content creation that follows WCAG guidelines and meets ADA and Section 508 standards. See our VPAT for details.

Table of contents:

What is Accessibility in Flipsnack?

How do you enable the Accessibility option?

Generate AI summary for Accessibility

Using the Accessibility feature as a reader

What is Accessibility in Flipsnack?

When it comes to flipbooks published in Flipsnack, accessibility is addressed on various fronts:

1. Accessibility of the flipbook player

The flipbook player, which encompasses the surrounding area of the flipbook along with buttons such as next page and previous page and the control bar at the bottom, is fully navigable via the keyboard using the TAB button. Clear labels are provided for screen readers, ensuring smooth navigation within the publication for all users.

2. Accessibility within flipbook pages

Interactive elements like links, buttons, and videos are navigable by the keyboard and readable by screen readers within flipbook pages. For other content within your flipbook, Flipsnack offers an Accessibility feature.

Navigation through the flipbook pages follows a sequence of layers arranged from top to bottom.

3. Accessibility of flipbook content

The Accessibility feature empowers users to add page summaries describing the content of each page. This ensures that screen readers can effectively convey the content of the flipbook, thus making it accessible to everyone.

For instance, Macbooks come with pre-installed apps like VoiceOver, aiding users with visual impairments through gestures and specialized commands. Similarly, Windows users need to install additional software such as NVDA or JAWS serving the same functionality.

How do you enable the Accessibility option?

1. Create or choose an existing flipbook and go to Customize.

1. From the left side panel, click on Accessibility and check Activate accessibility.

2. Click on Edit text, and a pop window will open.
3. Add the Title and Description for the pages you want to make accessible and click on Save changes.

By doing so, your publication is now accessible to visually impaired readers. Your flipbook will now contain the accessibility icon in the top left corner, as highlighted in the picture below:

Extract flipbook text

Would you like the Accessibility tab to display an exact, one-to-one match of the flipbook texts? This is what the second option is about. The extract text feature helps you automatically pull text from pages into the Accessibility panel, providing a seamless, direct reading experience.

By using this option, you don’t need to manually introduce texts for accessibility, which will save you lots of time. However, proofreading is needed - as always when using autogenerated options. 

1. So click on the Extract flipbook text option.

2. This pop-up will appear to inform you that image descriptions will not be extracted. Also, make sure to check the text before sharing your publication to ensure that everything is right.

Depending on the size and volume of your flipbook’s content, the process might take a while.

After the texts have been extracted successfully, you can easily edit, delete, or rewrite them.
Once you’ve finished the proofreading, just click on Save changes. 

Generate AI summary for accessibility

And let’s cover the third option. We understand and appreciate the importance of your time. That's why we have developed features that can take care of the manual tasks involved in making your flipbooks accessible to everyone. With the help of AI, you can now automatically generate a summary for each of your flipbooks' pages without having to write it manually.

Here’s how easy it is to do it. Go to Customize, and under Accessibility, select Activate accessibility.

You can now choose to generate content by clicking on Generate content.

You will be prompted with a message that says that you’re about to generate new content and that whatever content was previously added to the accessibility feature will be rewritten and can’t be recovered. Click on Generate.

This process might take a while, but once it’s done, check the generated content to make sure it’s accurate and correct. Then click Save.

If you want to return to the generated content to check it or edit it, just click on Manage content.

Using the Accessibility feature as a reader

The reader can now either click on the accessibility icon or highlight it using the Tab key and press the Enter key to activate it. 

By clicking on the icon, the reader's flipbook will be displayed slightly differently, with the text you’ve added to the description shown separately. The VoiceOver software will now read the text.

Readers can use the Tab and Enter keys to navigate through the various interactive buttons on the page: Next Page, Zoom in, View in full screen, Font size, and more.

Contact our support team via live chat for any additional information you need.