Case Study 7.7: Fulcrum—An OA Publisher Workflow

Initially developed by the University of Michigan Library and Press with partners, Fulcrum is a platform that allows authors to compile media-rich source material to accompany book-length treatises. As the platform has grown, Fulcrum identified accessibility as a core value and has adopted a dual approach to this issue.

• The Platform: Fulcrum worked with the Rackham Public Engagement Fellowship program, Deque, the DAISY Consortium, and Michigan State University Usability and Accessibility Research Consulting to review the accessibility of the Fulcrum platform. Results of these studies were documented in Fulcrum’s platform-wide VPAT and collection-specific VPATs.

• Platform Content: Fulcrum also released guidelines and resources for publishers using Fulcrum to encourage creation of accessible content on the platform.

Notably for this discussion of workflows, Fulcrum released a detailed EPUB specification describing how to create accessible content for use on their platform.  The specifications deal with a range of issues from file naming to accessibility metadata, folder structure, headers, tables, footnotes, paragraph numbering, marginalia, images, and ARIA semantics. While no specific publication workflows are recommended by the specifications, they provide guidance for publishers to construct their own.