What's New

March 19, 2024 — Accessibility metadata wizard

A new metadata wizard is available for beta testing on the Discovery tab. The wizard leads you through a series of questions about the publication to produce the metadata. Notably, it will add access modes and sufficient access modes based on the responses given.

Feedback about the wizard is welcome, not only for bug reports but also for improvements that could be made. Please open issues in the SMART GitHub tracker.

February 23, 2024 — Added specification to all reports

In the generated reports, the version of the EPUB Accessibility specification and WCAG tested against was only reported if the publication passed. This information is now available regardless of the outcome. The specification is also on a separate line from the test status.

September 21, 2023 — Updated distribution metadata

The Distribution metadata tab has been updated to match the new values available in ONIX code list issue 62. Included in the new release are fields for indicating conformance to the new EPUB Accessibility 1.1 specification and also for complying with the European Accessibility Act. The new release also includes many new fields for accessibility features as well as more descriptive titles for many of the codes.

May 26, 2023 — Updated discovery metadata

The Discovery metadata tab has been updated to include values for the latest accessibility features: ARIA roles, open and closed captions, page break markers, and page navigation. It is also now possible to state that publications do not contain flashing, sound, or motion simulation hazards.

The Discovery tab also now includes more robust validation of the metadata fields.

May 18, 2023 — Adding evaluator metadata associations

The evaluator metadata generated in the Result tab now includes associations between the fields. The evaluator is linked to the conformance result, and the evaluator's credential and report is linked to them.

May 18, 2023 — Added certifier credential field

The Result tab now includes a field for inputting a credential. This metadata is currently only used to generate metadata for the EPUB package document, but its use may be expanded to the final reports in the future.

November 18, 2022 — Experimental support for WCAG 2.2

SMART now supports evaluating EPUB publications against the WCAG 2.2 Candidate Recommendation. Evaluators are advised to only use this option for experimentation at this time, however. WCAG 2.2 may change again before becoming a final recommendation.

October 26, 2022 — Unlimited access

We have removed the restriction on creating reports for non- Inclusive Publishing Partner members. SMART is now available without restriction to everyone.

Existing accounts that were restricted to two reports a month have been migrated to unlimited access. It is not necessary to create a new account.

The login page has also been updated to better introduce the tool to users.

August 15, 2022 — Updated EPUB Accessibility 1.1 support

The EPUB Accessibility 1.1 specification made a couple of significant changes during the Candidate Recommendation phase. The conformance statement made in the dcterms:conformsTo property now uses a more human-readable pattern. The accessibilitySummary property was also changed from required to recommended to include.

The SMART tool now incorporates these changes in the experimental support for the standard.

August 15, 2022 — Ace support updated

The SMART tool now handles errors from the aXe 4.4 rule set reported by Ace.

July 11, 2022 — Support for EPUB Accessibility 1.1

Ace SMART now includes support for evaluating EPUB publications against the new Accessibility 1.1 specification!

On the Conformance tab, you can now select the 1.1 specification from the options at the top to begin an evaluation. Selecting this version will also allow you to change the WCAG conformance field to 2.1. SMART has also been updated to output the new conformance strings for Accessibility 1.1 specification.

This feature is still considered experimental as the specification is not yet a W3C Recommendation (i.e., it is still possible that it will change).

July 11, 2022 — New statistics box

The Conformance tab now includes a statistic box that reports how many success criteria have passed, failed, are not applicable, and have not yet been checked. This box remains fixed as the page scrolls.

July 11, 2022 — New ONIX values

The Distribution tab now includes support for ONIX Code List 196 values 25 through 29 and 93.