The digital age promised to remove barriers to knowledge, and yet many modern publications remain out of reach for millions. With the European Accessibility Act (EAA), the publishing industry faces a monumental shift, focusing on making knowledge truly accessible to everyone.
As the deadline for the EAA approaches, ensuring accessibility goes from being a best practice to a fundamental legal and ethical obligation for academic publishers. The mandate covers a wide range of accessibility-related requirements, such as alt text and inclusive content formats, presenting the industry with both challenges and opportunities in the evolution of scholarly communication. In a live session, Christopher Leonard, Director, Product Solutions, CACTUS, and Nafeea Afshin, Product Analyst, CACTUS, explored the implications of EAA compliance and emphasized the role of AI solutions in making accessibility not only scalable but also seamless for publishers. The following takeaways highlight how evolving regulations and AI-driven innovations are transforming accessibility in publishing.
What does compliance with the EAA mean for publishers?
Adopted by the European Parliament in 2019, the EAA aims to standardize accessibility requirements across all EU member states, ensuring equal access to products and services for individuals with disabilities. Compliance involves adhering to standards like WCAG 2.2 AA and EN 301 549, implementing internal accessibility training and monitoring, and considering how product information and labeling are presented.
The EAA presents several noteworthy advantages:
- It eliminates inconsistencies in accessibility regulations across EU member states
- It ensures products and services are affordable and accessible, eliminating any price premiums for accessible content
- It opens new avenues for businesses within the accessibility market
- It expands employment opportunities for accessibility professionals
Above all, it is simply the right thing to do.
Several critical compliance milestones are approaching, with the most urgent deadline set for June 28, 2025. By this date, all new products, services, and content are expected to adhere to the EAA directive. In addition, some legacy content may also require updates to meet compliance standards, albeit there’s a grace period of an additional five years for legacy content to meet full compliance.
As far as EAA compliance is concerned, the specific accessibility requirements for book publishing—particularly ebook publishing—can be broken down into four categories.
- Content and metadata: Ebooks need to be screen reader compatible, support text-to-speech, and have reflowable text. The metadata for ebooks must also include accessibility features. Additionally, images require alt text, and the content format must be specified.
- Websites: Sites that host ebooks must be WCAG-compliant in terms of perception, operation, and navigation. E-commerce interfaces for previewing and purchasing ebooks must also be accessible.
- Reading and access technology: Ebooks must be usable with assistive technologies that support reading. Moreover, publishers may also need to consider e-reading devices, which may require specific features or support like voice navigation and contrast settings.
- Multimedia and audiobooks: All audiovisual content would be required to include captioning, transcripts, and audio descriptions where necessary.
Accessibility is a comprehensive concept, and Christopher provided insights into a wide range of steps academic publishers must take into consideration as they comply with the EAA requirements. Although adhering to certain requirements can be deferred until June 2030, few fall into that category. It is also important to note that the consequences of neglecting compliance could include financial penalties. Beyond financial repercussions, additional risks such as potential reputational harm and exclusion from public and private sector procurement processes also warrant serious consideration. Non-compliance goes beyond mere regulation; it reflects a choice that excludes a large section of individuals from accessing your publications.
Also read: EAA Compliance and Beyond: Building a Culture of Accessibility in Publishing
Are AI solutions the answer to achieve seamless EAA compliance?
As the EAA compliance deadline approaches, publishers are racing to make their content accessible. One of the biggest hurdles ahead of June 2025 is generating alt text for images—a task that can feel insurmountable for medium-sized publishers juggling countless titles filled with visuals. Manually crafting alt text for every image is not only time-consuming but also overwhelming. The good news? Advanced computer vision tools are stepping in to streamline the process, making achieving accessibility more seamless and efficient.
In the next part of the session, Nafeea introduced the CACTUS AI Solutions platform, a cutting-edge suite of AI-powered tools designed to meet publishers’ evolving needs. This intuitive system puts a range of advanced AI tools, widgets, and plugins at publishers’ fingertips. Developed by a team of over 300 technology experts and 50+ AI specialists, the platform has already attracted more than five million users worldwide. With accessibility being the focus of the discussion, Nafeea spotlighted three key efficiency-driven AI tools.
Watch the session recording to see these tools in action.
Alt Text: For users relying on screen readers, alt text plays a critical role in making visual content accessible. CACTUS’s tool enables users to upload entire books or book chapters (files up to 50MB) and generate three distinct alt text variants: one for academic use, another for social media, and a marketing-friendly version with less jargon. Unlike typical generators that may not work well with complex scientific images, this alt text tool leverages metadata and surrounding text to provide more accurate, contextually relevant alt text descriptions. Nafeea also highlights that the tool meets WCAG AAA standards and prioritizes data privacy, ensuring that all uploaded files remain confidential.
Multi-lingual Audio: This tool converts research papers into audio in over 30 languages and summarizes them, while preserving their original meaning and context. Unlike conventional text-to-speech converters, CACTUS’s tool ensures precise translations that capture the original intent. Users can listen to key findings in their preferred language, making complex academic content more accessible. The tool supports various file formats, with uploads of up to 50MB.
AI Summary: Generating two types of outputs, CACTUS’s AI Summary tool provides key takeaways—helpful for quickly understanding research papers—and social media posts optimized for easy sharing. Users can upload up files (up to 50MB) in a zip folder and receive a structured CSV output summarizing research rationales, key findings, and broader implications. Social media summaries generated tend to be more concise and include relevant hashtags for greater reach.
It is also important to note that while file size limits apply to the web interface, CACTUS can work with publishers to have alternative file transfer options without size restrictions, ensuring smooth integration of accessibility tools into their workflows.
Complying with EAA standards goes beyond merely avoiding penalties; it is about making content genuinely accessible to everyone. Innovations such as AI-generated alt text and multilingual audio not only facilitate compliance but also enrich the overall user experience. Ultimately, the pressing question is not whether to comply, but how to turn accessibility into a competitive advantage.
Contact us to explore how CACTUS AI Solutions can support you in meeting global accessibility standards.