Meeting minutes
Any EPUBcheck updates?
Tzviya: Romain has sent me
an update
… I expect to work with him on an announcement on the
release of 4.2.5 and the update to the web site
… then we’ll continue with the next milestone
Avneesh: I met with Romain
yesterday and we discussed the preparation of that announcement
… in the previous SC call I noted there are two
releases coming up
… the production-ready release will be next week
… and the test release after that
… the new release will have localization updates for 6
or 7 languages
Daihei: how much fundraising remains to be done?
Avneesh: $7k
Daihei: I will make a
campaign in Japan
… there were initial contributions from Japan; there’s
been some time since then so it’s a good time to try it again
<tzviya> https://
Garth: we met with Avneesh,
George, Tzviya, and Rick to talk about going-forward fundraising
… how we get EPUBcheck into a self-sustaining state
… my back-of-the-envelope calculation was that if we
could get the “big five” to decide that for every new EPUB ingested
into their pipelines for sales, if they’d contribute 2 cents for
each that would get a funding stream of at least $50k/year
… it was suggested that I ask folk to ponder this in
your companies; whether there’s any possibility
Ivan: Ralph and I have been waiting for Romain to settle the final URI for the EPUBcheck page
Ralph: we know the URI on the W3C side; we’re waiting to hear where to proxy it
Ivan: right
Avneesh: that’s fine; Romain
will make the site ready -- he’s finishing the bits on Monday
… I’ll send you email when it’s ready
Ralph: I’ve been looking
into the Web Monetization work
… it might be of interest to this community
… even maybe for EPUBcheck
London Book Fair
Tzviya: it sounds like
they’re planning an in-person event
… anyone planning to attend?
Wendy: Rakuten has not reopened their international travel policy
Tzviya: same for Wiley
… if they shift it to virtual, are we interested in
submitting a presentation?
… I’ve never been involved in London Book Fair
Liisa: it’s mainly about
people trading rights
… there’s often a small section of digital booths
… it’s a mini-Frankfurt in a way; they try to get some
digital stuff going
Tzviya: so maybe we don’t need to invest time in it now
Debrief on WCAG 3 presentations to the BG and followup actions
23-Feb Presentation on WCAG 3.0
Tzviya: Jeanne Spellman’s presentation and followup items; reactions?
Liisa: the presentation was
great; really helpful
… I’ve had a lot of interesting conversations since
then; people are excited about where things are going
… there are some practical things on getting from here
to there we should talk about
… people I’ve talked with are excited about this new
way of validating stuff
… and wondering how far to go with the criteria now
… the idea of getting to ‘bronze’ and that being where
governments focus is great
… what are the incentives to get to silver or gold?
Tzviya: it’s an early
working draft so those criteria aren’t settled yet
… the section on functional needs and presenting user
criteria shifts the guidelines on their head
… it says “think about this from the perspective of
the user with various needs”
… I’ve been incorporating that now into my discussions
and into my internal training
… the WG asked for us to be engaged
… we need to be engaged
Wendy: I loved the
presentation
… I’m really excited about the incentive being that
silver and gold mean that you’re incorporating usability and
accessibility into your processes
… this is Kobo’s a11y initiative but it’s hard to
explain externally; saying we’re measuring against silver or against
gold will communicate it in a much better way
Tzviya: it’s great that EPUB
is mentioned by name in the WG too
… it would be great if we can provide some examples
… we rely heavily on Daisy; maybe others could be
involved as well
… Bill has asked Jeanne if she’d do a presentation to
IPTC
… she seems happy to do more presentations
Liisa: I had a few
conversations with various people
… it’s a bit confusing how much of the a11y is the
content provider and how much is the reading system
… it sounded like people are happy to have the
information and interested in following the work
… and would be happy to provide more examples if that
would be helpful
… people might not jump in but could be pulled along
Tzviya: the distinction
between content and platform is important
… they’re including clearer documentation about both
content and platform
… this will be huge
Daihei: in Japan there is
increasing attention to adopting a11y in a proper way in publishing
… at the end of January, one of the oldest print
publishers established an Accessible Book Committee
… they are looking at adapting the standards in the
Japanese industry
… another publisher established a new division
responsible for a11y adaptation
… we also learned that JIS has also established a11y
guidelines
… we need to find out [the relationship between] WCAG
3 and the JIS work
… and how to include WCAG 3 into the Japanese
adaptations
… on the March 23 meeting we’d like the Asia-time
meeting to have the presentation
… I will act on this to coordinate
Tzviya: Jeanne sent the presentation in Japanese at the end of the session
Daihei: sorry; I missed that
… thanks for the reminder!
Tzviya: we can work to see
if there is someone who can present in Japanese
… there is a forum for feedback on WCAG 3
… the feedback is an ongoing project; please make sure
this is known
<tzviya> please see https://
Daihei: we have decided to appoint a specialst, who was formerly chair of accessibility under the ministry in Japan
Avneesh: I hear a lot about
EPUB being a high priority for WCAG WG
… we should look at this from a publishing perspective
beyond EPUB too
… WCAG 3 will be several years in the future
… we want to test that things work well for publishing
… we can look from the spec point of view but we
really need input from the business world to verify that this
approach will work for the publishers
<tzviya> +1
Avneesh: the business community needs to inform us whether this ground-breaking new framework will help in checking and tracking conformance
<Zakim> tzviya, you wanted to mention cristina's work on EUAA
Tzviya: Cristina and Luc are
working on mapping WCAG to the EU Accessibility Act
… they’re working with existing standards to make sure
what the EU adopts are existing standards
… it’s worth mentioning this
Ralph: Jeanne allowed us to
record her
presentation
… so it can be replayed
… certainly a repeat presentation in Japanese would be
ideal but if there’s not a presenter, the video could be used with
Jeanne available for Q&A
Next Publishing@W3C webinar?
Tzviya: it’s been a while
since our webinar
… we might not have time to do it again in July
… thoughts?
Liisa: I’d like us to
produce a webinar for the self-published and the small file world out
there
… I got into a debate with someone who is preparing a
small self-published work
… and don’t really know much about the standards
… it would be great to pull them into the CG
… and find what cool and interesting stuff they may be
doing
… or at least make it valid EPUB so we can handle it
easier
Tzviya: I agree it it an
interesting community but I wonder if that’s where we most need to
infuse right now
… we did promise regular updates
Wendy: it might be more
effective to liaise with the platforms they are using
… my team has been doing amazing work to work with the
authors to help them level-up
… we could talk with the independent writers’
associations that are helping the authors
… that might be more effective than going to
individual authors
… the Community Group is still quite technical
… I wouldn’t want to invite throw people into the deep
end
Mateus: Wendy read my mind!
… it’s a good idea to keep our community up to date,
so a webinar -- or a few -- is good
… we do expect that anyone who joins the CG to propose
an idea that would require a new Task Force that they would lead
that TF
… so if we do get folk who are interested in issues of
self-publishers or self-publishing platforms, there’s that expection
but we should be nice to them
… count on us to help with a joint webinar
Tzviya: sounds like we have consensus that a webinar to keep the community informed is a good idea
<wendyreid> +1 to summer
Tzviya: given our workload, I’m hesitant to put this on our calendar before June or July
<mateus> +1
<avneeshsingh> July may be holidays
Tzviya: we can start to
draft an agenda
… it will be an update, less heavy on the survey, but
an update on what we’ve done with the survey
Around the Table
Liisa: as people are working
on a11y and come up with questions about best practices, do we have a
good space for that conversation?
… I have someone in my team who would like someone to
talk with about potential directions they are considering
… where in our scheme do we talk about best practices?
Avneesh: what stops them
from sending email to the Publishing CG ?
… opening a new a11y issue in the Publishing CG where
people can comment
Liisa: it might work; we can try it
Avneesh: the EPUB 3 repo has
active a11y questions
… let’s try to get some momentum without new
infrastructure
<mateus> +1 Avneesh
Ralph: are these questions about best practices specifically for EPUB?
Liisa: yes
… “we have this situation and think that maybe coding
it this way is best but it’s not working here and here; is there a
better way?”
<Zakim> tzviya, you wanted
to mention https://
<tzviya> https://
Tzviya: there’s the WAI IG
email list
… that Interest Group list is like that; sending
questions about a11y and experts answer them
… it would be great if we started asking questions
about EPUB there
… look at the archive; the questions there are so
specific
… let’s start asking about EPUB there
Avneesh: that would help in many ways
Ivan: in the EPUB WG meeting
earlier today George raised an interesting idea
… one of the big problems we have in the WG right now
is not having enough participation and feedback
… there’s a small number of individuals doing the work
… George said that the survey we did a year ago
influenced the charter; he suggested we could go back to those who
responded to the survey and note their specific issues and ask them
to engage
… do we have permission to use the survey respondents’
contact?
Liisa: we set it up to allow
people to opt-in
… they can opt-in to stay informed and (separately) to
be involved
… it’s a subset of the whole but we should be able to
use those lists
Ivan: it’s at the level of
“be informed”
… we can work on the phrasing of the message
… part of the message is that the Working Group has
been set up and working for several months, we have these specific
questions, and we welcome feedback”
… it’s great to know this is a possibility
Avneesh: the expectations of
the people who responded were quite high
… I am concerned about how to manage their
expectations
<liisamk> +1 to Avneesh- we need to talk about the big and the small
Avneesh: we’re not going to resolve all their issues
[adjourned]