Call for Nominations
Nominations are now open for the Accessible Book Consortium’s International Excellence Award for Accessible Publishing, which recognizes a publisher and a project initiative that each demonstrate outstanding leadership and achievements in advancing the accessibility of commercial e-books or other digital publications for persons who are blind, visually impaired or otherwise print-disabled.
The winners of this prestigious annual award will be announced during a ceremony on 20 October 2021 to be held for the first time at Frankfurter Buchmesse (20.-24. October 2021). WIPO and FBF signed an agreement for collaboration between the two organizations in 2020, including a provision on the issue of accessibility.
Past ABC award winners in the publisher category include Macmillan Learning (2020), EDITORIAL 5 (2019), Hachette Livre (2018), SAGE Publishing (2017), Elsevier (2016) and Cambridge University Press (2015). Winners in the project initiative category include the LIA Foundation - Italy (2020), ekitabu - Kenya (2019), Daisy Forum of India (2018), Tilfolexos - Argentina (2017), Action on Disability Rights and Development - Nepal (2016) and Young Power in Social Action - Bangladesh (2015).
Nominations in the publisher and project initiative categories should be completed on the application form (insert link here) and mailed to Accessible.Books@wipo.int by Wednesday, 30 June 2021.
The final decision of the selection panel, composed of experts in the field of accessibility, will be based on the following criteria:
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an organization-wide commitment to making content available in accessible formats;
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accessibility standards built into production systems to make books accessible on, or close to, publication date;
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collaboration with partners in the supply chain to ensure that accessibility is maintained in delivering the product to the print disabled end-user;
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innovative practices established to advance the accessibility of e-books and digital publications; and
ABC encourages nominations of companies, organizations or individuals based in developing or least-developed countries.