Accessible ePub · Navigation, Semantics, Alt Text
Cantos rebuilds your book as an ePub that carries what accessibility standards actually ask for: a real navigation document with landmarks, heading order repaired, the language declared, tables marked up, captions attached to their pictures, a text description for every image, and the accessibility metadata a retailer reads. Plus the report that shows its work. $49.99 per book, and the determination is free.
Check My Book FreeThe determination reads your file and answers with the numbers before anything is charged. A no costs you nothing.
Your book is never used to train AI. Ever.
“Not applicable” is a real answer: a book with no tables cannot fail a table rule. And the things no machine can judge from a file are listed in the report as not checked, rather than quietly counted as passes.
From the team behind BookDesignTemplates.com, trusted by first-time authors since 2011. Real people who have designed books for fifteen years, now working for you.
As seen on Amazon KDP · IngramSpark · BookBaby · Lightning Source · The Huffington Post · The Creative Penn · BAIPA · PBS
Why Now
Since 28 June 2025 the European Accessibility Act has covered ebooks sold in the European Union. In practice, retailers selling into the EU ask for accessibility metadata, and a file that has none is a problem at the shop door. Almost no self-published ePub carries any of it.
The message asks about accessibility metadata or conformance and reads like a form. What it is asking for is mostly in the file: navigation, semantics, language, descriptions, and the metadata that declares them.
It is far cheaper to publish a file that carries this than to go back through a catalogue afterwards. The work is the same either way; doing it now saves the second pass.
An ePub exported from a word processor usually has no landmarks, no page list, no declared language on its documents and no alt text. It reads fine with eyes and badly with a screen reader.
Before You Pay Anything
Upload your manuscript, or pick the ePub of a book we already built for you, and Cantos reads it on the spot and answers with the numbers: words, pictures, how many already carry a description, how many need one, tables, headings and any heading level you skipped.
What The File Carries
Not a badge and not a promise: specific, checkable things written into the file.
Your Words Stay Yours
A picture that already carries a description keeps it, word for word. Cantos writes descriptions only for the pictures that have none, and the report says plainly which is which.
A description is not a caption. We describe what is in a picture for somebody who cannot see it; we do not put new visible text into your book.
This is a rebuild of the file’s structure, not an edit of your writing. Copy editing is a different product, and it is your call.
The Price
The accessible ePub and the accessibility report beside it: fifteen named criteria, each one pass, fail or not applicable with its reason, plus every picture and its description.
Paid before the work runs, for the same reason as our recovery product: the file is the whole deliverable, so there is no way to show it to you without giving it to you. The free determination is how we keep that fair, and nobody pays blind.
The source can be your manuscript, or the ePub of a book Cantos already built for you. Refunds follow our usual policy, in the Terms.
Being Straight With You
This is the part most pages leave out, so here it is first.
Certification is a statement a third party makes. Cantos produces the file and the evidence; a retailer or a national body may still ask for a certification, and that is not something we issue. Nothing here is legal advice about your obligations either.
Colour contrast cannot be judged from the file alone, and neither can whether a description is a good description. Both are listed in your report as not checked, rather than quietly counted as passes.
A drawing stored as a Windows metafile is a set of drawing instructions rather than a picture. Those are named one by one in the report, with the fix: re-save as PNG or JPEG and send the book again.
The page list is at chapter-opening granularity, not page-by-page, because that is what we can place honestly, and the report says so in those words. Reading order is checked but not rearranged: a spine we did not write is yours, not ours.
One App, The Whole Book
The ePub is one half of it. The other half is on paper.
Why We Built This
An ePub that a screen reader cannot navigate is a book that some readers cannot have. That was true long before any law said so, and the law arriving did not make the work harder, it just made it urgent.
Almost all of it is mechanical: the navigation, the landmarks, the language tags, the table markup, the metadata. A person should not have to hand-edit a zip file to give a reader a fair chance at their book.
What I insisted on is the honest half. We tell you what we did, we tell you what we could not check, and we do not claim to certify anything, because certification is somebody else’s word to give. You get the file, the evidence, and a plain account of the gaps.
Tracy Atkins, founder
Before You Start
We do not give legal advice and we do not certify compliance. What we do is produce a file that carries what the accessibility standards ask for, and a report naming every criterion we checked, what it said, and what we did not check. That report is the evidence you hand a retailer who asks. Whether your own obligations are met is a question for you and, if it matters, your own advisers.
Never. A picture that already carries a description keeps it, word for word, and the report says which descriptions are yours and which Cantos wrote. We only write descriptions for pictures that have none.
Your manuscript, or the ePub of a book Cantos already built for you. The determination reads whichever you send and tells you what it found.
Fifteen named criteria, each marked pass, fail or not applicable with its reason, plus a list of every picture and its description. Not applicable is a real answer: a book with no tables cannot fail a table rule. The report also names which checker ran and lists what it does not check.
Colour contrast, and whether a description is a good description, because neither can be judged from the file alone. It also does not attempt maths markup, extended descriptions, or captions for audio and video, none of which can be produced from a manuscript without you. All of it is listed in your report rather than hidden.
Because the file is the whole deliverable, so there is nothing to show you that is not the product itself. The free determination is how we keep it fair: you see the numbers, the verdict and the price before any money moves.
No, and the determination refuses it free, with the numbers that say why. An accessible ebook needs text a screen reader can speak, and a photograph of a page has none.
There is a ceiling, and it exists to protect you rather than us: a book with so many pictures that describing them all would cost more than the flat price covers is refused, with an offer to quote it by hand. It takes well over a thousand pictures in one book to reach, so it cannot fire on an ordinary one.
That is where large print comes in, and it is the same commitment on paper. If we set your print book too, this ePub can also carry a page list matching it, at chapter-opening granularity.
The determination is free, the report is honest, and the file is yours to sell anywhere.
Check My Book FreeFree determination first. Never used to train AI.