We make every reasonable effort to ensure our ebooks are available to all readers, especially those with disabilities, allocating significant time and resources towards ensuring readers have equal access. This commitment is firmly in line with our mission statement and University of Michigan accessibility policies and guidelines.

Last updated: June 26, 2025

Since 2021, our EPUB production workflow has been certified accessible through the Benetech Global Certified Accessible program. Nearly all of our EPUBs published after January 2021 meet EPUB accessibility and WCAG AA guidelines and include an accessibility certification.

Accessible File Requests

To request a file for remediation in the UMP EBC, please complete the Michigan Publishing Accessible File Request form. We also make ebooks in UMP EBC available through the major support channels, including AccessText Network, Bookshare/RNIB Bookshare, and EMMA.

Conformance Status and VPAT®

Download VPAT®

Current product year EPUBs conform to WCAG 2.2 AA and EPUB Accessibility 1.1. EPUBs in product years 2021-2024 conform to older versions of WCAG AA and EPUB Accessibility. Prior to 2021, conformance to accessibility requirements varies. A more detailed breakdown of the accessibility of pre-2021 and backlist content will be available in July 2025.

We report the UMP EBC's compliance with WCAG 2.2 and Section 508 in a Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT®) Version 2.4 INT, which covers all available EBC product years along with an assessment of the Fulcrum platform, which hosts the UMP EBC. See Fulcrum's accessibility page for more details.

UMP EBC's conformance status is assessed through a combination of self-evaluation and third-party evaluation. Once a year our production process is audited by the Benetech Global Certified Accessible program for re-certification.

Features

• All titles are available for download (EPUB and/or PDF) and do not contain DRM restrictions.
• All titles published after 2019 contain basic textual descriptions of images.
• All titles published after 2022 contain full textual descriptions of images, through a combination of alt text and extended description.
• All audio and video associated with titles published after 2018 have transcripts, captions, and descriptions available.

Accessibility Roadmap

While accessibility is built into many of our processes, we continue to identify where accessibility can be added, improved, or content that can be remediated. We approach accessibility with the following three areas guiding our roadmap and activities:

• Make it easy to request accessible copies of books (or remediable DRM-free files) that do not meet accessibility requirements.
• Clearly communicate a book's accessibility conformance and features.
• Provide evidence of a plan to remediate books that do not meet accessibility requirements.

Activity	Outcome	Timeline	Status
Reformat 100 deep backlist page-scanned PDFs to accessible EPUB	Adds new and accessible backlist titles to EBC backlist product and establishes workflow for reformatting PDF-only content in EBC.	Q3 2025	In progress
Create title-level accessibility conformance tracker for all EBC titles	A publicly available spreadsheet with title-level accessibility and format information organized by product year.	Q3 2025	In progress
Add title-level accessibility metadata to ONIX feed and MARC records	Discovery services and ebook distributors will have detailed accessibility features and conformance information.	Q4 2025	In progress
Develop remediation plan for pre-2021 EBC titles	A detailed and publicly available plan for adding image descriptions to EPUBs or reformatting PDF-only content to accessible EPUB.	Q4 2025	Planned

Known Issues

The table below documents known accessibility issues with UMP EBC content and provides workarounds and plans for resolving the known issues. In some cases, issues may be deferred and the documented workaround should be used to resolve the issue.

Issue	Current Status	Timeline	Workarounds
PDF-only ebooks and PDF downloads are missing image descriptions	Open	Deferred	Image descriptions can be added by request to ump-access@umich.edu. However, in most cases alt text is contained in the EPUB version and we recommend this format as the accessible format.
PDF-only ebooks and PDF downloads are missing headings and other tags	Open	Deferred	Document structure can be added by request to ump-access@umich.edu. However, if an EPUB version exists for a title, we recommend this format as the accessible format.

Contact

If you have questions about our accessibility activities or feedback, email us at ump-access@umich.edu.