Guidelines

One of the key activities of the Round Table is development of guidelines for the production of accessible formats, including audio, braille, large print, e-text and tactile graphics. These guidelines should be used by anyone producing alternate formats to ensure quality and usability for people with a print disability.

All recently-published Round Table guidelines are available for free download in a range of electronic formats. Hard-copy print, braille and large print versions of the documents are also available for purchase, with discounts available for Round Table member organisations, using the Order Form for Round Table Guidelines (Word, 40 kB).

The guidelines are issued under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivative Works license. This means that Round Table owns copyright in the guidelines, but anyone may make and distribute copies of the guidelines documents as long as they are not modified, profit is not made and Round Table is correctly attributed as the copyright holder.

Round Table guidelines

• Guidelines for Producing Clear Print (2011)
• Duxbury Braille Translator Producer’s Manual (2011)
• Guidelines for Accessible Assessment (2011)
• The Rules of Unified English Braille (2010)
• Guidelines for Accessible E-text (2009)
• Unified English Braille Primer: Australian Edition (2008)
• Guidelines on Conveying Visual Information (2005)
• Older guidelines available for purchase

Guidelines development

The Round Table Executive Committee recently established a Guidelines and Standards Working Group to oversee the development and promotion of Round Table guidelines and standards. Read the Terms of Reference for this group (Word, 80 kB).

Current members of the Guidelines and Standards Working Group are chair Moira Clunie (RNZFB) and Sheena Daniel (cbm Australia).

The current projects of the Guidelines and Standards Working Group (as of August 2011) are:

• reviewing the Round Table’s audio production guidelines, Sound Advice.
• reviewing the Guidelines on Conveying Visual Information to assess whether an update is needed.
• considering whether a guideline on accessible forms is needed.

The Australian Braille Authority is currently working on an update to the Guidelines for the Formatting of Braille Material.

Guidelines produced by other organisations

The following links point to guidelines on accessible information that are produced by other agencies.

• DAISY Standard for structured digital books, produced by the DAISY Consortium.
• Accessible Publishing – Best Practice for Publishers – produced by Editeur, the World Intellectual Property Organization and the DAISY Consortium.
• Web Accessibility Initiative by the World Wide Web Consortium – home of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and other guidelines on web accessibility.
• WBU PowerPoint guidelines – produced by the World Blind Union.
• Accessible Content Best Practices for Digital Environments – guidelines for descriptive video produced by Media Access Canada.

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