Most of the information on this page as of June 10th, 2024, is based on (or, honestly, straight out copied from) a Clarivate/ProQuest Central webinar on ebook accessibility in the Ebook Central platform. I will probably add in additional resources over time as I discover them. You can view the recording yourself at the ProQuest Ebook Central guide. 

General Platform Accessibility Help Pages

• Apple
• Microsoft
• Google

• Most of the accessibility resources in this guide will be based on reading a ProQuest Ebook Central ebook on the web, and not by downloading and reading it on either the Adobe Digital Editions reader or the Bluefire ebook reader. At this point it will not include accessibility tools for iPads or Android tablets (I really, really, really don't recommend that you read a ProQuest ebook on your phone.
• Ebook Central ebooks are available in the EPUB format and the PDF format. EPUB is much, much better because the text is "flowable," which means if you bump up the font so that it takes up more of the page, the text will just flow on to the next page regardless of your screen size.. PDFs are not flowable, so if you bump up the font you have to awkwardly move around the screen to view all the content because it stays on one page/screen. How the Other Half Eats is only available as an EPUB. 

You can navigate EBook Central using your keyboard, specifically the Tab, Enter, and Arrow keys, to:

• •Navigate website menus (for example, navigate to Read Online, then press Enter).
• •Perform basic and advanced searches
• •Navigate search results
• •Read online including book navigation
• •Download ebooks

While EBook Central does use "colors that meet minimum contrast specifications", you may want to use a browser extension that will allow you to specify color and contrast options based on your own preferences. There are many options, but a few are:

• Midnight Lizard for the Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge browsers
• Color Changer for the Firefox browser

You can use browser extensions to enable webpage magnification that will keep your text in your viewing screen. A few possibilities are:

• Zoom magnification for the Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge browsers
• NoSquint Plus for the Firefox browser

OpenDyslexic Font - "OpenDyslexic is a typeface designed against some common symptoms of dyslexia." It is free to use. 

To use the OpenDyslexic font in ProQuest Ebook Central, you must have a personal profile (tied to your WSU email address, and you'll want one anyway to save books to bookshelves and save your annotations).

• Create a personal profile and sign in (this will be tied to your WSU email address). You will see a "Settings" link in the top right corner of your screen. Select "Profile" to create your account (based on your WSU email), and then sign in. The profile will also let you save books to a bookshelf and export your notes as text files.
• Page down the screen until you see "Accessibility Settings: Text Only Mode" and enable Text Only mode. Then select the OpenDyslexic typeface. Note: You will have to agree to ProQuest's Privacy Policy and Terms of Service. Then Save Changes.
• This will convert the ebook from PDF or EPUB to text, which will then be converted to the OpenDyslexic typeface. 

To use Text-to-speech in ProQuest Ebook Central, you must have a personal profile (tied to your WSU email address, and you'll want one anyway to save books to bookshelves and save your annotations).

• Create a personal profile and sign in (this will be tied to your WSU email address). You will see a "Settings" link in the top right corner of your screen. Select "Profile" to create your account (based on your WSU email), and then sign in. The profile will also let you save books to a bookshelf and export your notes as text files.
• Page down the screen until you see "Accessibility Settings: Text Only Mode" and enable Text Only mode. Note: You will have to agree to ProQuest's Privacy Policy and Terms of Service. Then Save Changes.
• This will convert the ebook from PDF or EPUB to text, which can be read by your text-to-speech reader.

Text-to-speech options exist within most browsers (and via your smartphone or tablet but this is focused on browsers)

• Microsoft Edge - Read aloud (built-in)
• Google Chrome - browser extensions
• Mozilla Firefox - browser extensions
• Apple Safari - VoiceOver (built-in on your Mac)
• and more (I'll update this later ;-)

Most browsers also have third-party browser extensions if you don't like their own text-to-speech options. 

To use a screen reader in ProQuest Ebook Central, you must have a personal profile (tied to your WSU email address, and you'll want one anyway to save books to bookshelves and save your annotations).

• Create a personal profile and sign in (this will be tied to your WSU email address). You will see a "Settings" link in the top right corner of your screen. Select "Profile" to create your account (based on your WSU email), and then sign in. The profile will also let you save books to a bookshelf and export your notes as text files.
• Page down the screen until you see "Accessibility Settings: Text Only Mode" and enable Text Only mode. Note: You will have to agree to ProQuest's Privacy Policy and Terms of Service. Then Save Changes.
• This will convert the ebook from PDF or EPUB to text, which can be read by your screen reader

Ebook Central should work with the following screen reader/browser combinations:

Desktop

• Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge - JAWS
• Firefox with NVDA
• Apple Safari with VoiceOver (Macs only)

Smartphone/tablet:

• Apple: Safari and VoiceOver
• Android: Chrome and Talkback