What are the accessibility benefits of digital books?

Accessibility is the main reason we love digital books. Many people struggle to read physical books for a variety of reasons including visual impairment, neurodivergence or physical disabilities. Digital books are able to overcome many of the challenges people experience with physical books. Standard features include the ability to adjust the text size, change colour and contrast and update the font (there are special fonts designed for conditions like dyslexia). Other possibilities with certain e-reading software or hardware include ‘text-to-speech’ functionality so digital books can be listened to like audio books, conversion to braille format and automated translation into different languages. The simple ability to search digital books is also a very useful feature. Unfortunately there are some digital books out there that do not offer accessibility benefits, because rather than being true digital books, they are merely digital images of a print book. Beware these imposters! At Lewisham Press, we only ever publish proper accessible digital books.