How to make your writing more accessible to audiences

Making your writing accessible for your readers is so much more about the types of formats you decide on and how you present your writing than anything mechanically wrong or right with the writing itself. It's so much more about the font, style and other elements that self published authors should relay to their formatter (if they aren't doing it themselves), There needs to be a lot of demystifying around this area of the publishing industry and I'm here to help with that. As I'm visually impaired, I think that its worth to throw my hat into the metaphorical ring and thank you for trying to make your writing more accessible and earning more money in the long run and ensuring people like me can read your wonderful stories! Let's look at a few ways I can help you with your desire to make your writing more accessible to readers.

Consider different editions

The easiest way is to consider different editions of your novels. I don't mean with massive editorial changes to the content of the writing, I mean different types of editions of your novel. In this aspect, there's a lot of leeway here for accessibility. Within print itself there's multiple different editions you could have: braille, large print. You need to also consider if you want an audiobook version of your work for those who like having podcasts on in the background tend to be the type of people who like audiobooks. Offering your work in different formats will not only give you more choice for your readers, leading to more sales (if the marketing is done well) but also increases accessibility of publishing for those people who are visually impaired like myself. This means that more readers can find your work in a format that works for their preferred reading type. If they have accessibility needs - or merely prefer it that way - giving them choice is the most important thing you can give people. I've picked up too many books that I can't read very simply because they aren't in big enough font for me, so I need to seek alternatve arrangements.

Put more into E-books and audiobooks

Audiobooks can be done from home or there's certain services like findaway voices that will help find a narrator for you. Accessibility in this area is expensive, but there's a lot of value is having an audiobook for your work. Mike Harman says that E-readers;

eReaders these days come with features where you can adjust the brightness of the screen according to the time of the day and depending upon your preferences. Many eReaders even have read in the dark feature, with lights that won’t strain your eyes, and neither would they disturb others around you. Users can even change the fonts of the text. They can increase or decrease the size of the font. Basically, eBooks ensure that your eyes are taken care of.

E-readers also have a read aloud feature, meaning that for those of us who need to want it, then there's that option for accessibility, too.

eBooks have been designed with text to speech or read aloud features. This allows people to listen to the eBooks if they are too busy to read it, for example, while driving, or while doing some chores. This feature is also helpful for children and adults with a learning disability or with visual impairment. It is also useful to help the user understand how a particular word is pronounced.

It allows readers to experience it in a different context, through audio (which makes readers experience it differently) and allows for people to have the time to enjoy your novel whilst living their busy lives, without having to find the time to sit down and read - which most people because of jobs and family life and just every day commitments - might not be able to do.

It also means for visually impaired people, there's a world of audiobooks just waiting for them. Access to sites like Kobo is another option. Maybe even the RNIB bookshare service if they're part of an educational institution or have a subscription to the service.

Additionally, those people who have chronic pain may benefit too, as they might not be able to hold a book as well. Although there are stands, those who are already 'spent' may not have the energy to pay attention to the audio and loose the story.

Consider Audio further

For me, audiobooks, large print books and other accessibility requirements are needed for me to enjoy the world of literature, as my eyes don't work the same way as other people. That's okay. For me, accessible publishing means that I can enjoy my favorite stories in a different way and don't have to struggle through a paperback or pay the money for the (sometimes larger fonts) hardback edition; as I like to be away from the screen when reading and on a laptop or phone it's inconvenient as I cant just flip the page and it makes me consciously aware that I'm reading. This means that I always have some distance between me and the book, as I'm having to do a movement on the screen that's more complex than flipping a page.

Larger print book would be very useful, but the challenge is the formatting and also the cost of these books, as there are hundreds of factors that go into determining the cost of this, I can't go into it fully here, but its more expensive to produce a book in larger font ebcause it means more ink and therefore more cost, which is one of the reasons thar publishers don't do it..

Formatting yourself? Screen readers are your friend

Make sure that you understand that accessibility for visually impaired people is something of a minefield when it comes to screen-readers. You need to put your work through one to make sure it works before putting it on stores, as sometimes PDFs will decide that they would rather not work for you because its their day off and you need to get them out of bed and ready for the day (bad anaology, I know).

Some services will format it for you if you publish your book through them (Draft2digital, for example) but make sure that you check that the PDFs you get from them work with screen-reading software. Otherwise there's plenty of different ways to make sure they are compatible using a simple Google search. If you want to learn abotu formatting your book, then you can colsult my guide in the recomended posts below.

SOURCES

Top 10 Advantages of eBooks Over Printed Books - Kitaboo

I hope this helped! Any more questions? Put them in the comments and I'll respond!

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