Julia Broad explains KDP's new requirement for alt text on ebook images. The EU Accessibility Act mandates new ebooks be accessible by June 2025, with backlist titles following by 2030. Use real selectable text instead of images, add meaningful alt text when needed, and test with screen readers.
Chapters
KDP now asks if your ebook images include alt text. It's not a cute little checkbox, it's something authors and publishers should be paying close attention to. And if you're wondering what accessibility for books is and what you need to do, good news. This video is for you. Hey there, I'm Julia the Book Broad, founder of Book Launchers, a full service publishing company that helps you write, publish and promote a nonfiction book to build your brand and your business. Depending on where you're selling books, accessibility is not a nice to have anymore Compliance is not optional in some places in the eu, the European Accessibility act applies to ebooks and E readers, and new ebooks were supposed to comply by June 28, 2025. Books published in the past in other words, you know author backlists have longer runways. In many cases you have until 2030 before it must be accessible. Now in the US the ADA is pushing digital accessibility expectations as well. Hasn't laid down a hard and fast rule like in the eu, but the expectation is there. Now, there are quite a few things to know about when it comes to accessibility, but there are a few key things regarding images in your book that I thought were really worth highlighting. Authors sometimes use screenshots or sometimes stylized images of text messages or emails or social media posts. And sometimes even they'll put their chapter title as an image because it looks cool. But screen readers can't read the text inside of images, so your reader using an accessible version hears image image image and gets nothing from it. It's a small thing to be aware of, but it makes a big difference in the accessibility of your book. Now good news. The fix is simple. Just use real selectable text. Format it like a text thread with labels, line breaks, indentation, italics, whatever fits your style. And if an image is necessary, add alt text to to describe it. But do not make your book a slideshow of screenshots. Accessibility is about being publishable and future proof. The industry has moved and it's time for self published authors to do a little catch up. So alt text is the main solution. But what is alt text? Well, it's not random text for example, Bad alt text is worse than no alt text. So let's make sure you know what text you're trying to create. Alt text done right follows basically three rules. First, describe what matters, not everything you see. So you can ask yourself what information does the reader need if they can't see the image? 2. Skip decorative images. It does not add meaning, and if it does not add meaning, just mark it as decorative, so screen readers move on. 3 Never repeat nearby text. Screen readers will read it twice, which hurts. Accessibility doesn't help it so an example of bad alt text is here's an image of a chart. I should not have to explain why that doesn't work, but in the interest of clarity, telling the reader who can't see the chart that there's a chart that's not useful. What does the chart conclude or what does it show better alt text for? That would be Bar chart comparing three book formats, showing audiobooks outselling, ebooks and print combined over a period of three years, starting in 2021 and ending in 2024. This is is not just about checking a box for Amazon, although that is part of it. It's about making sure your book can actually be read. And that's what professional publishing looks like. So what else matters for accessibility? Well, proper heading styles. So the H1, H2, H3 create a logical structure for screen reader navigation, also ensuring descriptive link text to provide context and inform readers of the link's destination. The link alone isn't useful, so share where it's pointing. And finally, a good idea is to test your ebook's accessibility using tools like screen readers to hear how it sounds. When you do this, you can check the box on KDP that it is accessible and feel confident your reader is enjoying your book in whatever format works for them.
