Re: Collections of web pages

From: John Foliot 
Sent: Wednesday, April 8, 2020 23:09
To: Bruce Bailey 
Cc: Alastair Campbell ; Andrew Kirkpatrick ; WCAG list (w3c-wai-gl@w3.org) ; Shawn Lauriat ; 508 
Subject: Re: Collections of web pages

Bruce writes:

  > I am arguing that we make the same common sense leap for ePub and WCAG 2.2.  A typical ePub, posted online as a zip file, is a set of web pages, full stop.



+1


Avneesh: +1
EPUB is set of HTML pages in form of files properly arranged in zip container.

An E-Pub (Electronic Publication) is a singular unit that comprises multiple screens or views, but is traditionally thought-of as a single and complete entity. 
It traditionally also has a single table-of-contents, which I will argue also suggests to me that a single "findable help" would be (in context) appropriate. This is not to say that
content creators cannot *also* provide contextual help in the 'footer' of each e-pub document if desired, only that it would not be mandated to do so.

Thoughts?

JF

On Wed, Apr 8, 2020 at 12:06 PM Bruce Bailey <Bailey@access-board.gov> wrote:

  Thanks Alastair for kicking off this discussion.  CC’ing John Foliot since he has some strong opinions about this.  CC’ing Shawn Lauriat because he has articulated how our current definition of web page does not stand up to technical scrutiny.



  Forgive me, but I will remind folks that in 2006 the WG though we needed a new term, “web unit”.  The good old bad old days!

  www.w3.org/TR/2006/WD-WCAG20-20060427/appendixA.html#webunitdef



  Can we agree that there is a certain amount of hand waving required with our current definition of web page?



  I agree that a typical PDF file is a web page.

  I agree that a PDF collection could be posted in a way that it is a set of web pages.  I pretty confident we can agree it is not typical.  For this discussion, I would really rather we not spend cycles talking about PDFs.



  I disagree that posting a .zip file (or similar archive of a collection) has any meaningful implication to our discussion of web page or set of web pages.  Yes, files posted online have a URI.  Not every URI is a web page!



  If one archives a set of web pages into a single zip file (and posts the zip online), it would be nonsensical to assert that the URI is now a web page and no longer a set of web pages.



  I am arguing that we make the same common sense leap for ePub and WCAG 2.2.  A typical ePub, posted online as a zip file, is a set of web pages, full stop.



  I admit that my argument is not in the shape of good formal logic.  I would ask that anyone who disagrees (than an ePub is a set of web pages) make a recommendation to how our definition of web page and set of web page might be tweaked (so that they would agree that an ePub meets their modified definition for set of web pages).





  From: Alastair Campbell <acampbell@nomensa.com> 
  Sent: Wednesday, April 8, 2020 11:42 AM
  To: Andrew Kirkpatrick <akirkpat@adobe.com>; Bruce Bailey <Bailey@Access-Board.gov>
  Cc: WCAG list (w3c-wai-gl@w3.org) <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
  Subject: Collections of web pages



  Hi Andrew, Bruce & everyone,



  During the discussion of two criteria (at least), the concept of “set of web pages” came up as a key point.



    a.. Findable help: Including ‘set of web pages’ helps to scope-out the very simple one-page websites and PDFs that are less likely to have human contact details. 
    b.. Fixed reference points: It says “a web page or set of web pages" so that it covers ePub and non-ePub files .


  Andrew mentioned that long PDFs could be considered a ‘set of web pages’, and that some PDFs techniques mention that. 



  As far as I can tell from our definition for a web page and set of web pages, all of these would be considered a ‘web page’ as they are located at a single URI:

    a.. A PDF; 
    b.. An ePub document; 
    c.. A ‘single page app’, unless it adjusts the URI & browser history to appear to have multiple pages.


  I can’t see a reference to ‘set of web pages’ in the PDF techniques, the closest is PDF2 but that doesn’t seem to reference the definition directly. 



  Can anyone see an issue with the uses of “set of web pages” in these two SCs?



  Kind regards,



  -Alastair



  -- 



  www.nomensa.com / @alastc



-- 

​John Foliot | Principal Accessibility Strategist | W3C AC Representative
Deque Systems - Accessibility for Good
deque.com