Meeting minutes
<ivan> Date: 2021-01-29
wendyreid: welcome everyone, today i want to get updates on a couple things. First is the a11y TF
a11y taskforce report
Update on Accessibility TF
<avneeshsingh> Jan 14: https://
<avneeshsingh> Jan 28: https://
avneeshsingh: these are minutes of 2 meetings in which we made some important decisions
… decision for referring to latest version of WCAG
… we will always point to latest version of WCAG, with provision of referring to 2.0 for backwards compatibility
… also, US and Canada are quite aggressive with keeping up with a11y spec
… other regions not quite so much
… don't want to discourage them from keeping up with a11y spec
… similarly, strongly rec AA, but allow A
… adapting or improving spec to keep in line with EUAA
… gpellegrino, luc, and cristina have done a mapping between EUAA and spec
… main differences are in requiring MO, and in adding a statement that DRM should not interfere with a11y
… we are in a good position to relese FPWD in Feb
… will discuss with Matt re exact date
… would also highlight one Q (not for discussion now): Should we rename epub a11y to something more generic?
… a more generic name way garner more attention, but some things, like MO, are specific to epub
ivan: does it mean that you want the WG to vote on publishing FPWD now?
avneeshsingh: not yet, still need to discuss with Matt
… will get back to the WG after
tzviya: whether this document needs approval by APA
… not really concern about our handing of a11y, but more about how this spec touches upon areas that affect publishing in general (e.g. EUAA)
George: APA normally does a review of the FPWD
… because of the importance of this (owing to the EUAA), maybe we can send them a version before the FPWD
… but we probably want to wait for Matt and avneeshsingh to make some of the changes we discussed recently
avneeshsingh: to clarify, the horizontal reviews kick in on publication of the FPWD
… no need to do it before then
… don't want to delay the timing by going to APA first
<ivan> +1 to avneeshsingh
avneeshsingh: the FPWD is just a stake in the ground, still a lot of work to do after until CR
… just a note, changing the name has strategic considerations as it make it harder to defend the epub specific parts
… last time we gave APA a request, we were delayed by a month before moving forward
George: so this FPWD will probably be unchanged for a while, and june is an important date for EUAA, so FPWD would be the version reviewed by Europe
avneeshsingh: once the FPWD is release, continuous changes will be published by the automated publishing system?
wendyreid: no, we don't have that turned on
… but we can republish as soon as the WG approves it
… so changes could be live, within, say, a week of the WG deciding it?
ivan: the last thing about the publication
… automatic publication means that there is a specific branch for each doc, and if there is a merge to this branch, then auto publishing will kick in
… its not instant in terms of merging PR
… but if matt makes a merge into that special branch, then auto publishing will kick in
… if we ask APA for review, they will review not only a11y, but the whole spec (2 other docs as well)
… APA may decide to delete review of the 2 other docs back to a11y TF, but formally they review the whole thing
… also, there are procedures in the sense that we have to flag issues after publishing FPWD
wendyreid: the plan was that we were going to publishing another draft of the other documents along side a11y FPWD
… we'll use this timing to trigger other horizontal reviews
CharlesL: don't we also have to initiate a tag review?
wendyreid: yes, but we're going to time that with getting everything published, so everything can be reviewed at once
Internationalization
ivan: i started on this piece, i18n guys have a self test which you are supposed to check your spec against
<ivan> Self test: https://
ivan: here it is, with my markup and comment
… i also added background that is mostly for i18n moreso than for us
… if you see anything that needs to be changed, go ahead
… there are places where i didn't know the answer, or points of contention that will need to be discussed
… if we agree with this as is, we can mark for i18n and get them involved
… don't want to go into all details now, but the biggest issue is probably the bidirectional text
… i think we are more or less alright, because we have the dir attribute...
… to clarify, the only thing we have to check is the package document, everything else is under the XML, CSS, etc. specs
… but we have to check our own metadata document
… there are 2 things to mention
… one, in the RS doc, there is sec 3.2, which talks about the package document
<ivan> https://
ivan: it does pick some items like what to do with identifier, etc.
… i think we should add something about how dir is managed
… two, there is one point where there is a contradition between what i18n reqires and what I believe we should do according to the spec
… this is what happens if there is text in which dir is set, and unicode in text has also directional note
… there is remark in spec that says unicode inherent directionality takes precedent over dir
… but this exact opposite of what i18n asks for
… this is a classic example for bidirectional text, e.g. text that starts with latin character, but the text is hebrew
… this should be marked dir rtl
… but spec seems to say that unicode implicit direction takes precedence
… seems like a bug in the spec
… also don't know what happens if title text contains unicode marker for rtl, does RS correctly handle that?
… spec should say that it should be handled
… these were the areas where i saw we had issues to discuss
… Dave had also open issues, e.g. reading direction in spine
… also, do we say that default of dir is ltr in spec?
… so please look at all of these issues, and consult the wiki above
… if we arrive at consensus on all these open issues, then I can flag them (and the wiki) for consultation with the i18n folks
wendyreid: i don't think we say that we have a default directionality
… we probably use the HTML default
duga: presumably the default has to be auto?
ivan: that was the other thing, dir doesn't have an auto setting
… not sure what auto would mean
… another issue, in HTML if you have a <a> there is hreflang attribute
… (i.e. lang of the linked resource)
… we don't have that in the package document
wendyreid: any questions about i18n?
… so we haven't submitted this to them yet
ivan: i would love it if people would review the wiki i prepared above
<duga> I will look it over
ivan: other possibility is that i could raise them as separate issues without involving i18n for now, and we can discuss issue by issue
duga: separate issues are nice, easy to keep track of things
ivan: okay, i'll create the separate issues
wendyreid: we have to do the other checklists for the other horizontal reviews (incl. security)
AOB?
wendyreid: okay, there are open issues in github right now
… would be good to get input
… particularly page progression direction, and conformance re. MO
… have a great weekend, see you all next week!