Born-Accessible Journals: Moving Beyond Compliance

Introduction: Accessibility as a Non-Negotiable in Scholarly Communication

Scholarly publishing is changing, and accessibility sits at the center of that change. What was once treated as an optional feature or a legal checkbox has become a fundamental requirement for how research gets created, shared, and read. Funding agencies, institutions, and governments worldwide now enforce stricter accessibility mandates. Publishers face a choice: meet minimum standards or build accessibility into everything they do.

Moving from retrofitted accessibility to born accessible publishing represents a shift in thinking about who gets to access scholarly content and when. This approach recognizes that researchers and readers with disabilities deserve seamless access from the moment content goes live.

Beyond Compliance: Moving from Minimum Standards to Born-Accessible Workflows

Traditional accessibility has relied on remediation, fixing published content after the fact to meet standards. This reactive model costs money, takes time, and produces mediocre results. Born accessible publishing reverses the process by building accessibility into every stage of content creation and production.

The difference matters. Compliance asks, "What's the minimum we must do to meet legal requirements?" Born-accessible workflows ask, "How do we make sure every reader can fully engage with this content?" That shift pushes publishers to integrate accessibility from manuscript submission through final distribution.

Born-accessible workflows recognize that accessibility features built during production are stronger, easier to maintain, and more cost-effective than those added later.

Key Practices: Building Accessibility into the Foundation

Structured XML-First Workflows

Born-accessible publishing starts with structured content. XML-first workflows, especially those using standards like JATS (Journal Article Tag Suite), create a semantic foundation that enables multiple accessible output formats. Unlike print-focused PDF workflows, XML captures the logical structure of content, distinguishing headings from body text, marking up equations properly, and preserving relationships between figures and captions.

This structured approach lets publishers generate accessible HTML, EPUB, and enhanced PDF formats from a single source. Screen readers can navigate properly tagged content efficiently, while adaptive technologies can reformat text without losing meaning.

Alt Text for Figures and Tables

Visual content creates significant accessibility challenges in scholarly publishing. Figures, charts, graphs, and complex tables convey essential research findings that must reach readers who cannot see them. Born accessible workflows require authors and production teams to create meaningful alternative text descriptions that communicate the same information visual elements provide.

Good alt text goes beyond simple descriptions like "graph showing results." It communicates the key findings, trends, and relationships the visual illustrates. For complex visualizations, this includes both brief alt text for context and longer descriptions that provide information equivalent to visual analysis.

Accessible Metadata Tagging

Proper metadata tagging makes content discoverable, navigable, and understandable. This includes semantic HTML tags that identify document structure, ARIA labels for enhanced screen reader support, and proper language tagging for multilingual content. These elements work together to create content that assistive technologies can interpret accurately, helping readers navigate efficiently and understand context without visual cues.

Benefits: Creating Value Through Accessibility

Born-accessible publishing delivers advantages that extend far beyond compliance. Wider readership emerges as content becomes usable across devices, assistive technologies, and reading preferences. Accessibility features like proper heading structures and clear navigation help all readers, not just those with disabilities.

Inclusivity strengthens research communities by ensuring scholars with disabilities can fully participate in academic discourse. Global mandates from funding agencies like the National Institutes of Health, the European Union, and research councils worldwide increasingly require accessible publications, making born-accessible workflows essential for funded research dissemination.

Better discoverability is another major benefit. Properly structured, semantically rich content performs better in search engines and indexing systems, increasing citations and research impact.

Challenges: Navigating the Transition

The path to born accessible publishing involves real challenges. Initial implementation costs can seem substantial, requiring investments in technology infrastructure, workflow redesign, and staff training. Production teams must develop new skills in creating effective alt text, implementing proper tagging, and using accessibility evaluation tools.

Legacy content conversion presents particular difficulties. Archives of previously published materials may require extensive remediation to meet current accessibility standards. Resource constraints affect many publishers, especially smaller societies and independent journals operating on limited budgets. However, the long-term cost savings and risk mitigation of born-accessible workflows often outweigh initial investments.

S4Carlisle's Role: Accessibility-First Publishing Solutions

S4Carlisle brings Benetech GCA (Global Certified Accessible) certification credibility to these challenges, demonstrating proven expertise in accessible publishing workflows. Our accessibility-first solutions integrate into existing production processes, providing publishers with the tools, expertise, and support needed to transition from compliance-focused remediation to born-accessible creation.

We partner with publishers to implement structured XML workflows, develop comprehensive alt text protocols, and train production teams in accessibility best practices.

Conclusion: Accessibility as a Competitive Advantage

Born-accessible publishing represents the future of scholarly communication. Publishers who embrace accessibility as a core value rather than a compliance burden position themselves as leaders in an increasingly accessibility-conscious research world.

Accessibility is not just the right thing to do. It is a strategic advantage that expands audiences, enhances research impact, and future-proofs publishing operations against evolving global standards. The path forward is clear: accessibility must be born into content, not bolted afterward.

Ready to move beyond basic compliance and future-proof your publishing workflow? Schedule a 15-minute call with S4Carlisle today to discover how our born-accessible solutions can expand your readership and enhance your research impact.