Accessibility

The MIT Press is committed to making its digital content, including our website and ebooks, accessible to as broad an audience as possible. We are working towards compliance in standards governed by the W3C, the IDPF, and Section 508 guidelines. This commitment is in line with our Press goals of publishing and disseminating important scholarly knowledge to those who need it, which includes making all content accessible in all formats. As a university press, we strive to continually evolve to meet the changing needs of the communities of readers we serve.

Current Projects

The Accessibility Working Group acts as the authority on all issues related to accessibility at the MIT Press. The group is made up of volunteers from various departments within the Press and is working on developing workflows that allow us to publish born-accessible content. We are currently focusing our initiative on the following aspects of accessibility:

  • The ongoing testing and remediation of our digital products, including ebooks and our website, to ensure compliance with industry standards.
    • We are working towards AA compliance to the W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (WCAG 2.0), Section 508 guidelines, and the IDPF’s new EPUB 3.1 specifications, though please note that older files may reflect previous processes and may not be accessible. As always, we will do our best to make accessible versions available upon request.
  • Creating and updating the Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) for all of our digital products, to provide a clear view of our current status in the move toward accessibility.
  • Working in conjunction with organizations such as the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Benetech and the DIAGRAM Center, the Book Industry Study Group (BISG), and the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF) to develop and test industry standards for accessibility.

Accessible Files

The MIT Press has partnered with Bookshare to distribute our ebooks in accessible formats. If a title is not available via Bookshare, please request the title through their system or contact us directly at mitpress_textbooks@mit.edu.

The MIT Press recommends VitalSource Bookshelf as an accessible reading platform for our titles. To evaluate the accessibility of other reading platforms, you may consult http://epubtest.org.

Please contact mitp-accessibility@mit.edu with general inquiries about the MIT Press Accessibility Initiative. This is an ongoing initiative and we welcome any feedback from readers.

Accessibility at MIT

For information about accessibility at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, please visit the Accessibility at MIT website.