BibliU Receives Perfect 100% ASPIRE Score for Accessibility

ASPIRE provides an external verification system and ranking for learning platforms and publishers on the basis of their accessibility statements.

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The project was launched in 2018 to encourage platforms and publishers to provide clear information about their accessibility features. This transparency of information enables universities, librarians and students to make the correct choice about which provider to choose for their ebooks.

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The ASPIRE project testifies to a growing awareness in higher education about the importance of accessibility: ebooks provide far greater opportunity for accessibility features than traditional hard-copy textbooks. ASPIRE’s initial audit in 2018 resulted in a disappointing average score of only 24% for the accessibility statements of different platforms.

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This spring, however, BibliU hopes that it has laid down the marker for the rest of the industry with our “gold standard”, 100% rating.

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Dave Sherwood, CEO of BibliU, had this to say about the result:

We want to be right at the forefront of promoting accessibility in education. Making visible the hard work BibliU have put into accessibility is crucial to help customers make the right decision about which platform to choose. Our 100% score is really awesome and we will continue to strive to promote accessibility as a crucial issue.

Our Commitment to Accessibility:

The BibliU team have worked hard to build an e-reader that leads the field in its accessibility features. You can read our accessibility statement here. However, here are three quick features that we are most proud of:

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1. Built-in text-to-speech and speed-reader functions where students can play, pause and reset a passage of text as well as adjust the words-per-minute rate to focus their reading.
2. A reading interface that allows students to customise the colour of their e-reader, or choose our night and flux modes.
3. An easy way to navigate the text, with tagged navigational content (heading levels, hyperlinks) that establish a clear and navigable hierarchy of information.

We believe that constant innovation is needed. So we integrate student and institution feedback into our development cycle. For instance one of our customers notified us that their user experience was improved with JAWS and NVDA screen readers. Within two weeks we had implemented that request and deployed the update to all of our users.

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BibliU’s 100% ASPIRE rating represents another step in our ongoing attempt to innovate accessibility in higher education.

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