Inspect every finished format
Make the ebook accessible
Test the ebook with a screen reader and on more than one device. Fix navigation and reflow problems, then record the verified accessibility features in the metadata. Since June 2025, this has also been a legal requirement for many ebooks sold in the European Union.
Authors often hire help with this: design or production, website or technical.
Why it matters
Roughly one reader in twenty cannot use a badly built ebook at all, and many more read with larger type or on a small screen where reflow matters. Since 28 June 2025 the European Accessibility Act makes accessibility a legal requirement for ebooks sold in the European Union, with the retailers and the library vendors checking the metadata rather than the file, which means a book with the features but without the metadata reads as non-compliant. Beyond the law, an accessible file is simply the file that works in every reader, every font size, and every app, including the one the reviewer opened it in.
Your part
- What you do
- Verify. Someone else may do it. Inspect the result yourself.
- Who normally owns it
- Publisher and Author. Publisher production builds the file and its metadata; a self-published author does both; either way the author checks the listing
- When
- Before the ebook files are final, 1 to 3 months before publication; check the listing once the book is on sale (Inspect every finished format: as soon as finished copies and final files exist, before launch week)Checked September 14, 2026 (opens in a new tab)
How to do it
The full walkthrough
Accessibility in an ebook means the file carries its structure as structure, not as appearance. Chapter titles are real headings, not big bold text. Every image that carries meaning has a text description. The table of contents is a navigable one, not a picture of a list. Reading order is the order a person would read, so a screen reader does not jump to a sidebar mid-sentence. Text is text, not baked into images, so it can be resized, reflowed, and read aloud. Color is never the only way a difference is shown.
How to do it depends on who builds the file.
Traditionally published. The publisher's production team builds the EPUB. Ask, before the files are final, whether the ebook will meet the accessibility standard (the term to use is EPUB Accessibility 1.1, which lines up with WCAG 2.1 level AA) and whether the accessibility metadata will be filled in. Then, once the book is on sale, check the retailer page: Amazon, Apple Books, and Kobo show an accessibility section on the listing when the metadata is there. If it is missing, that is a metadata fix for the publisher, not a rebuild.
Self-published. If you build the EPUB with Vellum, Atticus, Reedsy, or Kindle Create, the structure is mostly right by default; add image descriptions yourself, since no tool can write them for you. Then run the free checker: Ace by DAISY (a desktop tool and a web service) reads the EPUB and lists what fails, in plain language, with the fix. Fix, re-run, repeat until it passes. Then, wherever you upload the file, fill in the accessibility fields: KDP, Draft2Digital, and IngramSpark each have them now, and the fields become the metadata retailers display.
The metadata itself. The file carries a small set of statements (in the EPUB's package document) saying what it supports: text-to-speech, reflow, a navigable table of contents, image descriptions, and which standard it meets. Your distributor's form fills these in for you; if you hand-build, the Ace checker tells you which are missing. Libraries and the EU market read these before anything else.
A fixed-layout ebook (a picture book, a comic, a heavily designed cookbook) is the hard case: much of the above does not apply, and the honest answer in the metadata is that the file is not accessible, with the print or audio edition offered instead. Saying so is allowed; claiming features the file does not have is not.
Common mistakes
- Building an accessible file and never filling in the metadata, so the listing shows nothing.
- Treating the cover image's alt text as the job done; the images inside the book are the ones that matter.
- Exporting a PDF and calling it an ebook.
- Claiming features the file does not have, which is the one thing the law punishes.
- Leaving it to the week of publication; a rebuild takes longer than a check.
What done looks like
- The EPUB passes the Ace by DAISY check with no errors.
- Real headings, a navigable table of contents, a sensible reading order, and a text description on every meaningful image.
- No text locked inside images; nothing conveyed by color alone.
- The accessibility metadata filled in at the distributor (or in the file), and the retailer pages showing an accessibility section.
- For a fixed-layout book, an honest statement of what the file does not support and a pointer to an edition that does.
Evidence. Done means someone says the work happened. Verified means you checked the confirmation, link, or public record yourself.
Ask your publisher
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Sources and last checked
- Official source
- Official source (opens in a new tab)
- Other sources
- Last checked
- September 14, 2026
- How confident we are
- Verified
Rules and deadlines change. We last checked this information on September 14, 2026. If you see something that needs updating, please tell us.