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12:53:14 <Zakim> RRSAgent, make logs Public
12:53:15 <Zakim> please title this meeting ("meeting: ..."), wendyreid
12:53:39 <wendyreid> meeting: EPUB WG Fixed Layout Accessibility Taskforce Meeting 6 April 2021
12:53:48 <wendyreid> date: 2021-04-06
12:53:48 <wendyreid> chair: wendyreid
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13:01:47 <gpellegrino> present+
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13:03:16 <laurab> present +
13:03:18 <MattChan> present+
13:03:21 <shiestyle> present+
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13:03:43 <dauwhe> guest+
13:03:53 <MattChan> scribe+
13:04:07 <MattChan> wendyreid: there's no agenda today because TF meetings are less formal
13:04:24 <MattChan> ... i'm hoping for us to review the wiki that was posted some weeks ago
13:04:32 <MattChan> ... and then decide on a path
13:05:15 <MattChan> ... our TF's role is not to change the spec, but to produce a WG note that we can use to help people produce better FXL content, as well as to inform possible spec changes in epub 4, etc.
13:05:36 <MattChan> ... the note should be addressed to RSes and content creators
13:05:40 <gpellegrino> q+
13:05:49 <wendyreid> ack gpellegrino
13:05:57 <MattChan> gpellegrino: about the wiki page
13:06:16 <MattChan> ... i think we should split the document based on the different ways you can create an FXL
13:06:34 <MattChan> ... as far as i know you can have rasterized images in the spine (which are fully non-accessible)
13:06:53 <MattChan> ... vs putting SVG in the spine (where there are different ways of adding a11y)
13:07:13 <MattChan> ... vs having fixed layout HTML in the spine
13:07:47 <MattChan> wendyreid: you can't put images directly in the spine currently
13:07:56 <MattChan> ... but we see a lot of books where the pages are just single images
13:08:08 <MattChan> ... one of the challenges here is that there are so many types of FXL content
13:08:13 <dauwhe> q?
13:08:28 <MattChan> ... e.g. this slideshow style is very common with comic books and books that are very design heavy
13:08:39 <MattChan> ... or textbooks, or MO style
13:08:40 <dauwhe> q+
13:08:46 <wendyreid> ack dauwhe
13:08:49 <gpellegrino> http://kb.daisy.org/publishing/docs/fxl/img-spine.html
13:09:05 <MattChan> dauwhe: about the accessibility of the RS themselves
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13:09:27 <MattChan> ... if there was an FXL epub that was image-based, but the images had alt-text, do most RSes expose that alt-text?
13:09:46 <shiestyle> q+
13:09:53 <MattChan> ... if we did an FXL book with beautiful accessible HTML text layer, how much of that would get surfaced in most RSes?
13:10:02 <wendyreid> ack shiestyle
13:10:28 <MattChan> shiestyle: as you may know, in JP there are lots of FXL ebooks (e.g. for manga)
13:10:54 <MattChan> ... this is a topic we are exploring currently
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13:11:31 <MattChan> wendyreid: i haven't tested FXL in most RSes, but alt-text gets surfaced in reflow books
13:12:01 <MattChan> laurent__: if alt-text is good, screen readers will pick it up (e.g. NVDA)
13:12:36 <wendyreid> https://github.com/w3c/epub-specs/wiki/Fixed-Layout-Accessibility
13:12:37 <MattChan> ... where there is a mix of images and text, alt-text may not be discrete enough to be picked up
13:12:58 <dauwhe> q+
13:13:05 <MattChan> wendyreid: i don't think there will be a single practice for FXL since there are so many types of content that are being turned into FXL
13:13:14 <MattChan> ... there will probably be several solutions based on the type of content
13:13:14 <wendyreid> ack dauwhe
13:13:40 <MattChan> dauwhe: do we know if there have been efforts towards a11y for web comics? Maybe something we can learn from the HTML world there
13:13:41 <laurent__> q+
13:14:01 <wendyreid> ack laurent__
13:14:03 <MattChan> wendyreid: the only comic i've seen is the thing from Human (the comic-a11y example project)
13:14:29 <MattChan> laurent__: the only thing i've seen is from DeMarque(?) I will send a link to those interested
13:14:44 <MattChan> ... they are looking for better solutions because at the moment they must have a heavy editorial phase to get it working
13:14:50 <Ken_Jones> q+
13:14:55 <wendyreid> ack Ken_Jones
13:15:09 <MattChan> Ken_Jones: in my experience i don't think alt-text is read out in regular readers for FXL, its skipped over
13:15:25 <laurab> q+
13:15:39 <MattChan> ... another approach is putting live HTML text in the page, but hiding behind an image of the page which might retain the more complex layout of the print page
13:15:41 <wendyreid> ack laurab
13:16:10 <MattChan> laurab: we make a lot of FXL at our publisher, and we've seen that alt-text gets read by AT but not necessarily in RS
13:16:32 <MattChan> Ken_Jones: might this be good default behaviour? Not everyone will want alt-text read out
13:16:52 <dauwhe> q?
13:16:54 <MattChan> ... or at least make it an option
13:17:08 <MattChan> ... there's also a question of whether alt-text should be read out if the RS is in TTS mode
13:17:25 <MattChan> ... perhaps in TTS mode default behaviour would be to read out alt-text?
13:18:07 <MattChan> gpellegrino: in automatic TTS tech you can set it up to read out alt-text, but it requires a little bit of code
13:18:20 <MattChan> ... but those tools are not used by blind people, but by people with dyslexia
13:18:27 <MattChan> ... so there are two target markets
13:18:56 <MattChan> ... focusing on different technologies
13:19:06 <laurent__> Nota sample, accessible comics: https://m.nota.dk/embedded/43210?guest=true
13:19:35 <MattChan> ... and usually those TTS solutions don't speak out the semantics of the page (headings, etc.)
13:19:42 <Ken_Jones> q+
13:19:48 <wendyreid> https://comica11y.humaan.com/
13:19:53 <wendyreid> ack Ken_Jones
13:20:09 <MattChan> Ken_Jones: i've posted a couple things in the past about picture books with double page spreads
13:20:29 <MattChan> ... i.e. how to alt-text it when the same image applies in both HTML documents
13:21:00 <MattChan> ... also a lot of illustrated books aimed at older children have montages of multiple images overlapping and blended with one another
13:21:15 <MattChan> ... how should we describe those?
13:22:01 <dauwhe> q+
13:22:02 <MattChan> wendyreid: also, webtoons doesn't do alt-text either (and they do images of words, unfortunately)
13:22:06 <wendyreid> ack dauwhe
13:22:54 <MattChan> dauwhe: just to check my understanding, given the different types of FXL, some of the US publishers do FXL that is still very text heavy, but my amateur understanding of a11y is that the foundation is still having semantic HTML
13:22:59 <MattChan> ... but FXL is often weird CSS
13:23:26 <MattChan> ... though there is nothing preventing the underlying HTML from being semantic
13:23:37 <MattChan> ... so the other big issue is how are such FXLs produced?
13:23:50 <MattChan> ... often with some upstream tool
13:24:00 <Ken_Jones> q+
13:24:10 <MattChan> ... i've seen raw export from some of those programs, and it is a little hard to parse for a human
13:24:26 <gpellegrino> q+
13:24:29 <wendyreid> ack Ken_Jones
13:24:45 <MattChan> ... so how much progress have we made in getting passable HTML out of INDD, for example?
13:25:13 <MattChan> Ken_Jones: is this group going to recommend the best way to work with well known tools?
13:25:43 <MattChan> ... most of what we can do in reflow we can also do in FXL, it is just that it is currently much more time and work intensive
13:25:47 <wendyreid> ack gpellegrino
13:26:15 <MattChan> gpellegrino: we know that the FXL export from INDD is similar to PDF
13:26:36 <dauwhe> q+
13:26:37 <MattChan> ... words are individually positioned, tables are text on the page with the bottom of the table as an image
13:26:55 <MattChan> ... so we should not focus on these
13:27:06 <dauwhe> q-
13:27:23 <MattChan> ... also, the use of spans isn't often picked up on by AT
13:27:47 <MattChan> ... so well structured HTML that makes heavy use of spans still isn't great
13:28:08 <dauwhe> q+
13:28:32 <MattChan> wendyreid: this document is going to come down to best practices. We shouldn't go too far into giving software specific guidance. Don't want to be taken the wrong way.
13:28:41 <wendyreid> ack dauwhe
13:28:56 <laurab> q+
13:29:14 <MattChan> dauwhe: it sounds like we need to be in the advocacy business... that we have a good sense of how to construct an a11y FXL epub, but that the commonly used tools don't do that
13:29:26 <gpellegrino> +1!
13:29:39 <MattChan> ... i was thinking that it would be cool for us to make some samples of super high design FXL that are also quite accessible
13:30:03 <MattChan> ... publish it side-by-side with what common tools like Adobe currently output to document the gap
13:30:35 <MattChan> ... use this as a way to approach the various authoring tools
13:30:40 <wendyreid> ack laurab
13:30:41 <MattChan> ... to start some change
13:31:05 <MattChan> laurab: going back a little, I know that adobe is not currently working on improving the FXL export tools
13:31:34 <MattChan> ... i had a meeting last week with WIPO and they are talking to Adobe engineers to improve their export too
13:31:41 <Ken_Jones> q+
13:31:45 <wendyreid> ack Ken_Jones
13:32:02 <MattChan> Ken_Jones: my CircularFLO is a tool to export FXL epub relies on INDD
13:32:23 <MattChan> ... i would love to help make a11y books (it doesn't have to be my tool though)
13:32:34 <MattChan> ... so I am offering
13:32:50 <MattChan> ... could maybe make a selection of different types of FXL (cookbook, picture book, etc.)
13:34:06 <MattChan> ... because we're all used to looking at code, the code in Adobe INDD FXL looks bad to us, but as long as it works and is accessible, I don't necessarily see a problem
13:35:04 <MattChan> wendyreid: so i think we know what the problem is, and some of the areas we want to tackle
13:35:09 <MattChan> ... samples are a great idea
13:35:13 <dauwhe> q+
13:35:14 <gpellegrino> q+
13:35:17 <wendyreid> ack dauwhe
13:35:38 <MattChan> dauwhe: would it make sense to do some of this in conjunction with the Daisy KB?
13:35:48 <MattChan> ... there is some epub FXL info there, but its not highly detailed
13:36:06 <MattChan> ... no idea how Daisy sees that info, but it seems like the place people are already going for this sort of info
13:36:09 <gpellegrino> q-
13:36:14 <gpellegrino> +1
13:36:24 <MattChan> ... we might be able to get some volunteers to build it out with common a11y pitfalls
13:36:27 <Ken_Jones> +1
13:36:40 <MattChan> ... might be able to reach a broad community without reinventing a bunch of stuff
13:36:59 <MattChan> mgarrish: that's the ideal, yeah
13:37:04 <MattChan> ... that's why we have it in github
13:37:57 <MattChan> ... a lot of the issues we've talked about today hasn't been enumerated for us, we're not aware of the granular issues
13:38:09 <MattChan> ... but we're interested in helping to find whatever solutions are necessary
13:38:30 <Ken_Jones> q+
13:38:34 <wendyreid> ack Ken_Jones
13:38:35 <gpellegrino> q+
13:38:37 <MattChan> ... e.g. for tables, i'm thinking of using ARIA labels on top of the generated output to start layering in a11y
13:38:49 <Ken_Jones> https://paper.dropbox.com/doc/Accessibility-in-Fixed-Layout-EPUB--BIWc83QakRzo0gC_ZWHi3415Ag-3il8mlIqLpUfHHhcZEmgy
13:38:54 <MattChan> Ken_Jones: i've started listing problems and potential solutions in this document
13:39:09 <MattChan> ... i haven't tackled tables and hierarchy in this doc yet
13:39:33 <MattChan> wendyreid: very helpful
13:39:37 <wendyreid> ack gpellegrino
13:39:57 <MattChan> gpellegrino: what about partially sighted people?
13:40:14 <MattChan> ... PDFs are an issue because font size, spacing, etc. cannot be changed currently
13:40:25 <MattChan> ... all of these benefits are lost with FXL
13:40:27 <dauwhe> q+
13:40:35 <Ken_Jones> q+
13:40:44 <MattChan> ... those PDFs can be "validated" with WCAG, and so can FXLs
13:40:55 <wendyreid> ack dauwhe
13:41:04 <MattChan> ... also, we should mention contrast requirements (at least foreground and background)
13:41:20 <MattChan> dauwhe: there have been people who have brought up finding a middle ground between full FXL and reflow epub
13:41:40 <MattChan> ... e.g. something like FXL, but with viewport set to 100vh x 100vw
13:41:51 <MattChan> ... and allow reflow within the constrained page
13:41:53 <gpellegrino> responsive design? :)
13:42:10 <MattChan> ... not really sure how that would work in practice
13:42:10 <mgarrish> q+
13:42:56 <MattChan> ... but CSS has also progressed quite dramatically since the FXL spec was originally released (e.g. flex, grid, etc.)
13:43:11 <wendyreid> ack Ken_Jones
13:43:17 <MattChan> ... probably the fewer FXLs that exist in the world the less of a headache they will be
13:43:49 <MattChan> Ken_Jones: i recommend that people don't make FXLs, but i think there'll always be the need for that sort of highly designed, magazine-style content
13:44:01 <MattChan> ... two things
13:44:07 <MattChan> ... PDF seems to be alive and well and not going away
13:44:34 <MattChan> ... the INDD design people interested in a11y seem to be talking about a11y in PDF
13:44:47 <gpellegrino> * I produce both accessible EPUBs and PDFs :) *
13:45:22 <MattChan> ... and the other thing is that rather than trying to massage fixed layout content into a reflow/semi-reflow document, could we not generate a secondary reflow output?
13:45:35 <wendyreid> ack mgarrish
13:46:03 <MattChan> mgarrish: I think dauwhe's approach is what the PDF people have been thinking about as a way of complying with the latest WCAG
13:46:38 <MattChan> ... having that HTML become reflowable as you zoom would help us for those low-vision users
13:47:07 <MattChan> ... we have to be careful not to lump the concerns of blind users with those of the low-vision users
13:47:12 <MattChan> wendyreid: we have a couple things to work on
13:47:26 <MattChan> ... we could look at Daisy KB and say what is not here and what needs updating?
13:47:41 <MattChan> ... based on what someone who is producing FXL might want to know
13:47:58 <MattChan> ... we are talking about future ways to do FXL better, like what can we do with grid, flexbox, etc.
13:48:08 <MattChan> ... might be experiments we can run with this new CSS
13:48:21 <MattChan> ... and then just distilling some best practices and suggestions for people producing FXL
13:48:30 <MattChan> ... like making sure your reading order is correct
13:48:45 <MattChan> ... and when FXL is necessary, vs when content can really just be turned into reflow
13:49:20 <MattChan> ... use of mixed modalities is currently under-implemented by RS, and therefore not used by publishers, and so on and so on
13:49:24 <mgarrish> q+
13:49:34 <wendyreid> ack mgarrish
13:49:34 <MattChan> ... but mixed modalities is kind of a middle ground
13:49:55 <MattChan> mgarrish: we should also look at improvements that can be made using existing spreads using ARIA, etc.
13:50:40 <MattChan> ... ARIA flow might be useful within a multi-page context for example
13:51:30 <gpellegrino> * in DAISY we are testing DPUB aria in different browsers... very low support *
13:51:31 <MattChan> ... though might not be well supported in RS (or at least not as well supported as in AT)
13:52:42 <MattChan> wendyreid: those threads (e.g. Daisy KB, best practices document (starting with Ken's doc + some ARIA stuff), and fun experimental stuff)
13:52:42 <dauwhe> q+
13:52:46 <wendyreid> ack dauwhe
13:53:04 <MattChan> dauwhe: also documenting things where we're not sure what to do
13:53:14 <MattChan> ... even just identifying the problems is useful
13:53:19 <MattChan> wendyreid: absolutely
13:53:21 <Ken_Jones> Q+
13:53:26 <wendyreid> ack Ken_Jones
13:53:51 <MattChan> Ken_Jones: about the tag hierarchy, i'm unsure how valuable that is when each page is a separate entity
13:54:05 <MattChan> ... e.g. does the hierarchy restart at the end of each page?
13:54:13 <dauwhe> q+
13:54:18 <wendyreid> ack dauwhe
13:54:19 <MattChan> ... just not something I'm an expert in right now
13:54:27 <MattChan> dauwhe: this is also a problem that HTML has not faced
13:54:42 <mgarrish> q+
13:54:53 <MattChan> ... each is generally its own DOM, its own a11y tree
13:55:16 <MattChan> ... it sort of seems that if a screen reader is identifying headings, then as long as you are avoiding nesting issues, then you are fine
13:55:44 <gpellegrino> q+
13:55:44 <wendyreid> ack mgarrish
13:56:07 <MattChan> mgarrish: this is one of the big problems with FXLs, when you break things across pages
13:56:14 <MattChan> ... e.g. how do you break a table across pages?
13:56:40 <MattChan> ... it also makes trying to navigate these sorts of documents unenjoyable for users
13:56:49 <wendyreid> ack gpellegrino
13:57:22 <MattChan> gpellegrino: i tried to validate FXL using ACE, and I didn't get any errors for the FXL itself (i.e. the viewport or other things)
13:57:33 <MattChan> ... we should try to create a FXL with zero errors in ACE, at least
13:57:36 <Ken_Jones> q+
13:57:41 <wendyreid> ack Ken_Jones
13:58:13 <MattChan> Ken_Jones: that's definitely possible, as long as its a valid epub with alt-text then it should be valid (even if the alt-text is trivial)
13:58:25 <MattChan> wendyreid: i'll send out a summary email to this group
13:58:36 <MattChan> ... we're going to need a couple more meetings to figure out what to do about this
13:58:44 <MattChan> ... and who has the bandwidth to do some of these things
13:59:04 <MattChan> ... please keep in mind these topics, and which you are interested in contributing to
13:59:16 <MattChan> ... does this time work for everyone? Or should there be a separate Doodle?
13:59:28 <MattChan> gpellegrino: let's run it by george
13:59:37 <MattChan> wendyreid: will do
13:59:42 <MattChan> ... thank you all
14:00:09 <wendyreid> zakim, end meeting
14:00:09 <Zakim> As of this point the attendees have been gpellegrino, MattChan, shiestyle
14:00:11 <Zakim> RRSAgent, please draft minutes
14:00:11 <RRSAgent> I have made the request to generate https://www.w3.org/2021/04/06-epub-fxl-minutes.html Zakim
14:00:15 <Zakim> I am happy to have been of service, wendyreid; please remember to excuse RRSAgent.  Goodbye
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14:00:23 <wendyreid> rrsagent, make logs public
14:00:43 <wendyreid> rrsagent, make logs public
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