The past year has seen Lapiz Digital undertake a series of strategic transformations aimed at enhancing its service delivery and operational efficiency. A key focus, says head of operations Meena Prakash, “has been the refinement of our agile project management practices to enable faster turnaround times while significantly improving client satisfaction. We have made targeted investments in talent acquisition, bringing onboard experts in AI, digital accessibility, and content automation—which have expanded our technical capabilities and reinforced our commitment to innovation.”
Advanced tools and platforms have been integrated into the workflows, streamlining internal processes while ensuring consistent quality and scalability across projects. These technological enhancements have played a crucial role in optimizing performance while maintaining high standards of delivery at Lapiz Digital.
“Our service portfolio has been substantially expanded,” Prakash says. “We now offer comprehensive data annotation services across a wide range of formats, tailored to meet clients’ evolving needs. We have further strengthened our technical publication services with the addition of specialized S1000D conversion and advanced technical writing expertise.” Complementing these offerings are PDF remediation services that the team has introduced to emphasize digital accessibility, further underscoring its dedication to inclusive and high-quality solutions.
Meanwhile, the Lapiz team is focused on compliance automation. “We have carried out comprehensive accessibility testing, covering navigation, content readability through screen readers, and alt-text accuracy using both assistive devices and tools such as Ace by DAISY and Smart Checklist to ensure full WCAG compliance,” Prakash says. “Additionally, we have developed a proprietary tool that transforms InDesign files—the main challenge of which is the multiple templates in use—into a fully accessible EPUB3 format with minimal manual interventions through a unified and simplified template.”
In recent months, the team has successfully delivered accessibility testing projects for several leading book publishers, consistently meeting the rigorous standards required for Benetech certification. Even though automation has significantly accelerated compliance efforts, Prakash reiterates that human validation remains essential for tackling nuanced issues such as logical reading order and contextual alt-text.
Lapiz Digital now offers its XML workflows with fully integrated metadata management. “Capturing, embedding, and validating metadata—including author details, ORCID IDs, abstracts, keywords, and DOIs—directly in our JATS XML-first process ensures it is preserved and correctly rendered across formats while facilitating downstream indexing and archiving,” Prakash says. “Automated validation tools ensure compliance with standards such as CrossRef and PubMed while our outputs are optimized for discoverability across platforms.”
The teams “are trained in metadata structuring, accessibility tagging, and assistive technology compatibility,” Prakash says. “This ensures that every journal and project we produce meets the highest standards of quality, accessibility, and compliance.”
