Publisher stories

Penguin Random House

“We were able to make a really meaningful difference to many readers’ lives which means a lot to all of us here.” Simon Mellins, Ebook Technology Coordinator, Penguin Random House

Global publisher Penguin Random House, releases 15,000 titles annually under 250 imprints. These titles include fiction and nonfiction for adults and children in both print and digital.

Working with RNIB Bookshare

RNIB Bookshare customers have long been requesting book titles directly from them and were really keen for Penguin Random House to join the list of publishers who work with us.

On August 2018 Penguin Random House launched its partnership with RNIB, making all its books available to blind and partially sighted readers. They shared 25,000 titles on RNIB Bookshare for used by print disabled learners.

“Working with the RNIB on ways to make our eBook’s more accessible was a fulfilling, straightforward, and also very practical experience for us at Penguin Random House.”

“The RNIB team were at all times professional, and really understood the practicalities of working with a large publisher with often complex systems and requirements.”

 A message to other publishers

RNIB Bookshare customers are thrilled about the range of Penguin Random House content available for print disabled learners.

“We were able to make a really meaningful difference to many readers’ lives which means a lot to all of us here. We really encourage other publishers to work with the RNIB to make reading more accessible for everybody.”

Pearson Education UK

“Working with RNIB has been a great experience, in many ways, enabling Pearson to really advance its organisational objectives in supporting the learner community who have print disability” Nick Gowler, Director of Publishing Services at Pearson

Pearson are a key educational publisher, particularly for our school learners and educators. Pearson have long been a key supporter of sharing resources with print disabled learners on RNIB Bookshare, and were one of the first publishers to work with us. From an early stage in our development Pearson have been committed to helping us, and have tested new processes for us, in making more content quicker and easier to share for educators and other publishers. They supply requested content in record time, from reliable and helpful staff.

Pearson and learning

Whether it's at home, in the classroom, or in the workplace, learning is a never-ending road of discovery, challenge, inspiration, and wonder. At Pearson, we create tools that provide opportunities for learners at every stage of their journey. Because wherever learning flourishes, so do people.

Before RNIB Bookshare

Traditionally & historically, gaining access to education materials was a lengthy & complex process which travelled many vertical/horizontal inter-company departments & governance authorities. The process would start with granting permission to use our IP/content for accessible use by way of issuing a licence to modify the IP, followed by sourcing the files for accessible access/conversion from our archives and ultimately distributed to the learner or educator via many unsecured methods such as email, FTP sites. This process was also repeated for each & every request we received, often for the same content, which resulted in high levels of duplicated internal admin, time & effort.

Partnering with RNIB Bookshare

Since partnering with the RNIB and with a Bookshare contractual agreement, Pearson is now able pre deposit, via automation metadata & e-files from all suitable Higher Education & UK Schools education collections, with permissions granted & accessible licensing in place, without the need for individual educator or learner requests direct to Pearson. This in turn provides a faster, more streamlined service for both publishers and end users with equal and timely access to content for people with print disabilities

Sage Publishing UK

“The RNIB Bookshare initiative is the single most important innovation within the accessibility community.” 

SAGE Publishing were one of the first publishers to support RNIB Bookshare. They were quick to join with us, sharing their files with our print disabled learners soon after our launch as Load2Learn in 2011. They have led the way for many of other publishers and were one of the first to directly upload their titles to the site and more recently, to set up a direct feed to automatically add their titles in bulk to RNIB Bookshare.

“We have happily reaped the benefits of our involvement.”

This publisher provides a lot of academic titles for further and higher education, and so is a key publisher for our customers and learners. 

“Our customers and librarians now have a fast, secure and centralised source for all SAGE digital content.”

RNIB Bookshare is passionate about accessibility starting with our publishers; and that that it is not a fix that we do to their books. Our publishers send us electronic files of their titles to share on our site for educators and print disabled learners to use under the terms of the Copyright and Rights in Performances (Disability) Regulations 2014. RNIB Bookshare is a free service to UK education providers.

“RNIB processes thousands of requests per year on our behalf and their dedication has greatly increased our efficiency and service levels at no cost. It is a pure win-win situation for both us and our customers.”

SAGE, trialled our file uploading facilities ensuring that we could make the process for publishers as easy as possible, as well as meeting the needs of our print disabled customers.

“The delivery of our content files to the RNIB is a seamless, automated process and the partnership has allowed us to scale our content delivery in order to meet growing market demands.”

Having a strong commitment and focus to providing accessible resources, SAGE Publishingwon the Accessible Books Consortium International Excellence Award for Accessible Publishing at the London Book Fair 2017.

“At SAGE we passionately believe in creating a level playing field for our audience. All our readers should be able to access our content at the same time. Our partnership with the RNIB has ensured this goal has become a reality.”

“There are many barriers to accessibility for publishers. As we all seek to disable these barriers the RNIB Bookshare initiative is the single most important innovation within the accessibility community.”

A final word from SAGE; “We are proud to work with the enthusiastic and knowledgeable team at the RNIB and recommend that all publishers make their content available through the platform.”