Training Courses

Get your teams and leaders ready for accessibility! My training courses have been delivered to publishers of many different sizes and sectors, and provide a mix of contextual and legal background, detailed information that you need to know, and the best strategies and workflows that I have learned from working with over 30 different organisations.

Courses are currently available on image description, accessibility metadata, and an accessible publishing 101 course that can be delivered as a quick overview all the way up to a comprehensive, multi-day course.

When you choose a course with me, we work together on developing a customised version of my training programmes tailored to your specific organisational makeup and needs. Courses are normally delivered virtually, but can be delivered in-person upon request. You are free to record the sessions to share among your teams and to show to new hires over time.

To discuss further and book a course, get in touch. In the meantime, here are some things previous attendees have said:

“It would be difficult to find anyone more knowledgeable about digital publishing and accessibility than Simon.”

"This was really helpful - wish I had taken something similar 6 months ago!"

"I feel much more prepared now!"

Current Courses Available

Accessible Publishing 101

Why is accessibility suddenly such a focus in digital publishing? What specific laws apply to the markets you are active in? How can we comply with the requirements without causing headaches for our budgets and workflows?

Accessible Publishing 101 has been delivered to organisations in 5 countries, and distils the latest information and perspectives from industry groups and publishers around the world along with the techniques and workflow best practices I’ve learned from working with over 30 organisations on accessible publishing.

This course can be tailored to your requirements, but contains the following core modules:

  • Key legislation

  • Impacts and benefits

  • Formats and markup

  • Image description

  • Accessible design principles

  • Metadata

  • Strategies for Success

The course can be delivered as a single session covering just main principles, or as an in-depth full-or-multi-day course to make sure your leaders, key stakeholders and critical team members have all the information they need to make your organisation compliant in a smart, achievable way that makes sense for your business and is most impactful for your readers.

Accessible Image Descriptions: A Practical Guide for Publishers

Creating useful and accurate image descriptions at the scale that publishers work is often the greatest single challenge faced by publishers in their accessibility rollout. Even if you plan on outsourcing this task, knowing what makes good image descriptions (‘alt text’), how to be useful to your readers and how to assess a description written by someone else are key skills that your teams need to become proficient at. Whether you plan to produce descriptions in-house, via an external company (typesetter or separate vendor) or using artificial intelligence (AI), this course will ensure your teams are ready for the challenge.

Key modules include:

  • Legislative background

  • What image descriptions actually are and why ‘alt text’

  • How they interact with captions

  • How context affects image descriptions

  • Writing to an audience

  • Language tips learned from writing many hundreds of descriptions for many different publishers!

The course includes interactive image description exercises, and can use your own images to make it as relevant as possible.

Accessibility Metadata Masterclass

Accessibility metadata is a key requirement of accessibility legislation around the world, including under the European Accessibility Act. It’s also a significant challenge to implement in a way that is both accurate and efficient. This course explains the power and value of accessibility metadata and why it is stressed so heavily in legislation, as well as exploring which kinds of metadata are required, how they work, and most importantly the strategies for rolling them out that will protect your business resources while making an enormous difference to print-disabled readers’ lives.

Key modules include:

  • Legal requirement

  • User perspective

  • Platform display

  • Formats (including ONIX and Schema)

  • A full breakdown of my client-tested, well-proven strategy for efficient metadata production

This course is developed collaboratively with your teams, to ensure the guidance is laser-focused on your specific publishing systems and metadata setup.