Book accessible to blind and seeing-impaired people

The book, titled Touching Parchment: How Medieval Users Rubbed, Handled, and Kissed Their Manuscripts, was published by Open Book. It considers how signs of wear on the folios of parchment manuscripts can reveal how those books were handled in the past. Readers deliberately touched images in order to swear oaths or kissed them to fulfill the requirements of religious ceremonies.

Published as a free open-access book, it is available in several formats. It has 122 images, all keyed to ‘alt-text’, so that readers with limited sight can hear descriptions of the images.  There is also added metadata that tells a reader using accessibility aids what type of content is included. The author is keen to hear from readers relying on these accessibility aids about how to improve the reading experience even further.