In recent years, many scholarly publishers have been working to make their content more accessible to people with disabilities. Now, with the European Accessibility Act (EAA) in effect and forthcoming updates to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Title II regulations, accessibility is moving to the forefront of publication planning and speeding up publishers’ timelines for implementing support for digital content.
It’s important work with benefits for all aspects of scholarly communications. For publishers, the current challenge and opportunity is determining the best ways to make their content accessible by design, so they can proactively meet requirements and prepare for future updates.
In this blog post, we break down current and forthcoming accessibility guidelines impacting scholarly publications. We also preview an upcoming Scholastica webinar where experts will share advice for embedding accessibility into journal workflows: “Keeping up with accessibility standards: strategies for small & mid-sized journal publishers,” on September 23 at 3 PM UTC.
You can register for the webinar here. Everyone who signs up will receive the recording.
What are current accessibility standards for scholarly journals, and what’s forthcoming?
For journal publishers, accessibility requirements are becoming increasingly important as governments introduce or strengthen guidelines for digital products and services. A few developments are particularly relevant:
The European Accessibility Act (EAA): Effective as of June 28, 2025, the EAA is an EU directive establishing common accessibility requirements for certain products and services sold or provided in the European market, including e-books, e-readers, e-commerce services, and electronic communications. For scholarly publishers, the EAA may therefore apply to certain digital publishing products and services, depending on how they are provided and whether they fall within the Act’s scope.
For covered services and content, the EAA requires digital information and features to be accessible to people with disabilities and usable with assistive technologies. EN 301 549 provides technical guidance for meeting these requirements, including many of the accessibility principles found in WCAG 2.1.
Microenterprises (defined as businesses with fewer than 10 employees and annual turnover or balance-sheet totals below €2 million) are technically exempt from the EAA service requirements. However, publishers that fall under this exception may still need to assess their accessibility practices, particularly if they publish on behalf of or in partnership with public entities subject to forthcoming ADA Title II requirements.
ADA Title II: First put into effect in 1992, with the last set of regulatory updates released in 2024, ADA Title II exists to stop state and local governments from discriminating against people with disabilities. If a journal publishing program is part of a covered public entity, including public universities, libraries, and other government-affiliated institutions, it falls within Title II. The DOJ has announced updates to ADA Title II requiring web content and mobile apps to conform to WCAG 2.1 Level A and AA standards, including content provided through third-party vendors. Those updates will go into effect on April 26, 2027, for public entities serving populations of 50,000 or more and April 26, 2028, for public entities serving populations under 50,000 and special district governments.
This is an important distinction for small publishers: the ADA Title II deadlines are not based on the number of employees at the publishing program or publisher. They are based on the population served by the covered public entity. Therefore, a small journal team at a public university should not assume it will get additional time for compliance.
Broader movement toward WCAG: While different nations have different accessibility requirements for government agencies and private entities, various international accessibility laws are based on the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) published by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). In many ways, WCAG has become the standard for digital accessibility, and many countries require conformance with a recent version of those guidelines.
What accessibility areas must publishers focus on to comply with WCAG standards?
For journal publishing and editorial managers, the important takeaway is that accessibility is not solely a website or technology issue. Publishers will need to consider accessibility across journal platforms, articles and multimedia, submission and publishing workflows, and the tools and vendors involved in producing and delivering digital content. Examples include:
1. Journal websites and publishing platforms: Publishers should assess whether journal websites and platforms are accessible with assistive technologies. Key factors include keyboard navigation, logical page structure, headings, link text, color contrast, focus indicators, form fields, error messages, and screen reader compatibility.
2. Articles and digital documents: Article content should be structured in ways that make it usable by people with disabilities. For HTML, this can include appropriate semantic headings, lists, tables, links, image descriptions, and accessible equations or other complex content. For PDFs and other downloadable files, publishers should consider whether documents have appropriate tagging, document structure, alternative text, and other features needed for assistive technology.
3. Images, figures, tables, and multimedia: Scholarly content presents accessibility challenges that are more complex than ordinary web publishing. Figures, charts, diagrams, photographs, tables, mathematical notation, and multimedia may all require specific approaches. For example, simply adding alt text to a complex scientific figure may not adequately communicate the information it contains. Publishers should develop guidelines for determining when images require concise alternative text, longer descriptions, or other accessible ways of conveying the underlying information. Videos and other multimedia may also require captions, transcripts, audio descriptions, or other accessibility features depending on applicable requirements.
How can journal publishers effectively embed accessibility standards into their workflows?
Given the technical nature of accessibility standards, publishers and vendors will need to work together to fulfill current requirements. Accessibility is much easier to maintain when it is incorporated into journal workflows rather than treated as a final production check. So, it’s essential to understand which accessibility responsibilities sit with the publisher and which sit with its vendors so both parties can embed accessibility into their respective areas.
We’ll explore practical ways publishers and vendors can work towards making content accessible by design during “Keeping up with accessibility standards: strategies for small & mid-sized journal publishers,” a free virtual GW Ethics in Publishing Conference webinar that Scholastica is hosting on September 23 at 3 PM UTC. Featuring the following speakers:
- Damita Snow, Director of Accessibility & Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, Publications & Strategy at the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE)
- William Horne, Product Designer & Accessibility Lead, Scholastica
- Michelle Piehl, Adjunct Professor at the GW University MPS in Publishing program and Instructor at 508 Institute
We invite you to sign up for the webinar here (all registrants will receive the recording).
The speakers will cover advice for assessing your current accessibility posture and establishing accessibility implementation milestones. They’ll also share strategies to incorporate accessibility into journal workflows, including process and training considerations for publishing managers, authors, editors, and software and service providers, all of whom play a role in fulfilling accessibility needs. We’ll also consider ways publishers could leverage AI to support accessibility efforts now and in the future.
Of course, making content accessible is about more than ticking off compliance boxes. Advancing accessibility expands the reach and utility of content for people with disabilities. It can also enhance the overall user experience of those interacting with scholarly publications by providing them with different engagement options, for example, by enabling people to listen to journal articles while driving or read video subtitles in a noisy environment. All of this helps to further the value of scholarship and the missions of the publishers disseminating it.
