For the past years; I’ve been working with my sites as I write content like a book. I believe some people may experience some difficulties when reading posts that are written like chapters of a book. If you have posts that are long as 4000 words, and you were trying to segment your long stories into chapters; you may encounter some problems when some of your visitors have trouble navigating on your site,–reading from one post to the another.
Don’t spoof your viewers who are about to reuse your E-book!
Some people didn’t even understand! If you published your book, and licensed it under Creative Commons license; it’s irrevocable when published in paperback. But some publishers are trying to claim their book is CC-licensed, but what they are doing is spoofing viewers, and readers,–causing licenses to be invalid.
Continue reading “Don’t spoof your viewers who are about to reuse your E-book!”
Choosing Draft2Digital over Amazon KDP
I’ve been recently publishing my E-books for a couple of months with Draft2Digital. However, I’ve started to avoid signing up for Amazon KDP because, their guidelines are strict, and they always use DRM for all of their E-books; they’re been also criticized because, they’ve condoned production of foie gras,–documented by Mercy For Animals. There’s lots of controversies on amazon.com (according to Wikipedia).
When you first sign up for Draft2Digital self-publishing service, the interface isn’t cluttered at all. I tried it out with my Chromebook,–while my screen-reader is running. Your account is active right away!
You start off with an empty list of books. All you have to do just add a book what you’ve just written. When you first hit the button to add a book, the wizard begins. You start off with uploading your book file. I’ve first tried a Google Document, but it’s not supported. Then I tried a regular DOC file instead, and it works. I’ve also writing a title and description for my E-book. I’ve started off with small E-books, then I started larger versions later on.
I’ve chosen categories for my E-book. The ISBN is automatically generated as I go to the next page of the wizard.
Chromevox Magic: Adjust Navigation Granularity With Draft2Digital
Some people has been struggling with Chromevox running on a self-publishing platform, Draft2Digital. If you recently sign up with this self-publishing platform while you’re using Chromevox on your Chromebook; you may encounter these possible problems. These problems apply to recent versions of Chrome OS. Or if you had a Chrome extension, Chromevox; you may encounter these same problems too!
I found a solution to these problems, and I’m going to share these tips with you.
If you were recently adding a new book, or editing an existing book; and you used a tab key to jump to some focusable elements,–such as an upload button, or something similar… you can choose your book file that contains your updated book, or new file for a new book. Press enter on a selected file. If Chromevox won’t jump back to the browser content; reboot Chromevox by pressing Ctrl-Alt-Z. Press the tab key, and continue your publishing process.
This is the another problem what you’ve never encountered before… Chromevox’s focus element jumps to the bookmarks bar when entering the WYSIWYG editor; most likely this bug hasn’t been fixed at all. You can press Alt-Shift-I to report an issue to the Chrome OS team,–so they can take a closer look. This is common when jumping in/out of the editor when sticky mode is active.
If you were activating the front/end matter, you can use the line or word navigation. You need to go in reverse… and use the space bar to click on these checkboxes what Chromevox has trouble jumping to when tab navigation is being used. However; you can use the mouse to activate these optional items. Useful if you were using a mouse to interact with elements on your browser.
If you were at the preview screen to download your ebook copies, and you struck the next button, and you were returned back to the same page; The hidden checkbox that is required to activate is not activated. You can go forward via object navigation. As you go to the next button; switch it to the word navigation mode. Press the space bar at the hidden check box, and then activate the next button again.
The problem is even worse; you have to choose these vendors with a word navigation, and you might need to go in reverse to do this. If you were done, hit the button, and click on any of the list items that apply to your rights of your content. But don’t forget to activate the hidden checkbox to activate it, and finally hit the publish button. Be sure to revert to object navigation.
If for some reason why you have trouble with Chromevox, just file a bug, and contact support for a website,–where you publish books. It may take some time for the developers to fix the issue.
How this problem is found on Draft2Digital’s website itself,–effecting Chromevox’s performance?
- Hidden elements causes Chromevox itself to skip all focusable elements,–except for links, buttons, text editing fields, and navigational links.
- When interacting with combo boxes, you have to press enter, and the up and down arrow keys to hear a selection.
- Since the site is about image-based, checkboxes, sliders, buttons, combo boxes, text editors, radio buttons, tables, and other elements aren’t friendly for Chromevox users.
- There’s no screen-reader specific controls available. This is the signs of violations of ADA (Americans With Disabilities Act)
- There’s no distribution channel where you can implement braille books for some braille readers.
- There’s no button such as “Basic HTML” for accessibility purposes.
The only work-around for this issue is by using your mouse to interact with this website.