Accessibility is the practice of ensuring there are minimal barriers to access and interact with websites and other electronic information for users with physical or situational disabilities. Accessible design ensures that there is equal access to information and functionality for as many users as possible, including those with permanent, temporary, or situational impairment of, for example: vision, hearing, mobility, memory, attention, or cognition; as well as those with economic or technological restrictions, such as internet speed and bandwidth.
This document provides a best-practice recommendation for tagging objects in JATS XML documents so that the XML can then be used to make accessible end user presentation versions of the article, generally in HTML or EPUB formats. The goal is not to make the JATS XML accessible but to ensure that the appropriate information is available in the XML document.
We have focused on the XML document tagging; rendering or final presentation of the objects is considered to be out of scope for these recommendations. The following recommendation is for JATS v 1.3 and backward. Differences between the Journal Publishing and Archiving DTDs are noted within the recommendations as applicable.