Meeting minutes
A video recording of the session is also available.
<Daihei> Liisa: intro
<Daihei> Europe/Americas meeting
<Daihei> Let's start with Laurent/EDRLab+PRHAlex
<Daihei> Liisa: Thorium reading system
<Daihei> Laurent: Readium is a community authorizing system
<Daihei> 2nd module is to navigate
<Daihei> Laurent: Readium turns to several SDK. Desktop, mobile, etc.
<Daihei> LCP is a copyright protection
<Daihei> Desktop Readium: Mac/Windows, PDF capable
<Daihei> Laurent: Last week released Thorium updated. So far 60K downloads
<Daihei> Laurent: DAISY 2.02 applicable
<Daihei> Thorium is updated continuously
<Daihei> Liisa: PRH started testing Thorium
<Daihei> Alex: We started looking at Thorium, and use Thorium and tested it and Quality Testing now
<Daihei> Alex: Thorium is a great tool for accessibility
<Daihei> Laurent: Let me speak accessibility
<Daihei> 1. What is accessibility feature?
<Daihei> For low vision people.
<Daihei> Dyslexia friendly
<Daihei> Contrast adjustable and fine tuned to blind people
<Daihei> Adaptable to various screen peculiarities
<Daihei> Navigate to different accessibility requirements
<Daihei> It can be customized in accessible ways
<Daihei> Laurent: TTS capable
<Daihei> Synthetic sound
<Daihei> System voice is in French, and text in English, you can force the usage of the English speaker
<Daihei> Variable audio speed
<Daihei> Accessible DRM, which is LCP
<Daihei> https://
<Daihei> Thorium for EPUB proofing
<Daihei> Every mobile, desktop user can use Readiam CSS
<Daihei> Readium CSS is interoperable
<Daihei> Evolution of CSS
<Daihei> You can find either Readium CSS or
<Daihei> Rule of CSS is open to tuning
<Daihei> Available for reading system developers
<Daihei> Trying to find a balance to tune to best reading system
<Daihei> Totally open accessible system
<Daihei> Alex: Excited to continue using Thorium
<Daihei> Laurent: We need knowledge of both sides (readers and developers)
<Daihei> Liisa: Is there any opportunity for author's choice?
<Daihei> Laurent: Reading system must provide something.
<Daihei> We need pages, etc.
<Daihei> Lots of normalization issues
<Daihei> It was mandatory to provide normalization
<Daihei> Maybe some cases alternative ways to be provided
<Daihei> CSS cannot block that
<Daihei> We must find several level of choices in normalizations
<Daihei> Liisa: How Thorium made available to libraries?
<Daihei> Laurent: Yes, Desktop Readium is available for library patrons
<Daihei> Via OPDS
<Daihei> Thorium by getting URL of OPDS
<Daihei> Laurent: Users can extend the return from the application, Thorium
<Daihei> If Library adapts extended Thorium
<Daihei> you can look into the total catalog
<Daihei> You can do the same kind of things on other mobile apps like Aldiko
<Daihei> Library in Belgium adapts Thorium
<Daihei> Laurent: I would like to see more retails/libraries adapts Thorium
<Daihei> Liisa: what's next for Thorium?
<Daihei> Laurent: Long pages...
<Daihei> Annotations
<Daihei> We'd like to be able to share annotations
<Daihei> Laurent: Printing pages with constraints from DRM, LCP
<Daihei> Partnership with page CSS
<Daihei> Accessibility area, rulers, follow the lines, etc.
<Daihei> Syrables, punctuations, etc. to be made available
<Daihei> People request more functions and we try to respond to them
<Daihei> Laurent: Throium is based on open source, dependent on donations
<Daihei> If you have desire to use Thorium, please join and help
<Daihei> Simon: Reflowable books, inability to re-sizing of paging
<Daihei> Reading emvironment can be limited
<Daihei> Can it be fixed in the roadmap?
<Daihei> Laurent: Yes. Based on the needs of publishers, we are in the process of prioritizing accessibilities, OPDS and
<Daihei> And then other requests to be dealt with
<Daihei> George: We are testing Thorium and whole bunch of other reading systems
<Daihei> I love Thorium
<Daihei> But some particular fonts are not read
<Daihei> Dyslexia needs to be updated. But, I love Thorium
<Daihei> Laurent: We use Thorium to comic use
<Daihei> Mary: LCP, thanks to Laurent, has been a huge help for us
<Daihei> LCP is so good that no readers notice it
<Daihei> Mary: I will talk more about team
<Daihei> De Marque team
<Daihei> NetGalley team is to populate data and dev team is to take care of audio as wel
<Daihei> Fireband team is to deal with Firebrand cloud
<Daihei> EDRLab developed LCP and that is so great for us
<Daihei> Mary: Audiobooks we have more challenges
<Daihei> When we launched Shelp, audio streaming do not work well
<Daihei> De Marq, Firebrand and all we worked together to solve the problems
<Daihei> Fireband cloud team downsized the file size, and then downloads to happen more quickly
<Daihei> Streaming piece is now working better
<Daihei> Move on to key takeawasys
<Daihei> Users want to work flowlessly
<Daihei> Before we launched streaming feature, users were very vocal about the problems
<Daihei> Then, users are accepting the streaming experiences much better
<Daihei> We had to delay one week in July launch on iOS
<Daihei> Mary: It is great to have all the partners, working seemlessly
<Daihei> Questions:
<Daihei> Mary: How are audiobooks fitting into the environment you have for getting early buzz going?
<Daihei> It is working good
<Daihei> Fran: We are taking audio experiences more important
<Daihei> Ubiquitas experiences
<Daihei> How we can provide analytics, consumption, ecosystem is capable of handling
<Daihei> Publishing people reach out to various different communities, which we would like to deal in 2021
<Daihei> Liisa: Where things are going with people outreaches to audio communities, etc.?
<Daihei> Fran: Virtual author tools, etc. we are looking at them
<Daihei> Offering stylized individual readers,
<Daihei> Every conceivable ways to provide more user friendly experiences by providing scaling up the backends, etc.
<Daihei> Liisa: Still doing Kindle, and RSMK, how big is that?
<Daihei> Fran: As long as people are using them, we aim to support them, which is 1/7 of users are still using them
<Daihei> Influencers do not want to be told how to consume
<Daihei> Fran: (answering to Laurent
<Daihei> Laurent's question)
<Daihei> Laurent: Accessibility of new app is already working?
<Daihei> Fran: Laurent, you must know better than I do on that
<Daihei> Laurent: Large focus on accessibility
<Daihei> Laurent: I want to know bigger request from audiences?
<Daihei> Fran: We are not getting large requests on it
<Daihei> Mary: Not so many
<Daihei> Mary: When requested, we work with De Marque team to solve it
<Daihei> Liisa: Thank you very much for Fran and Mary to join us
<Daihei> Liisa: Next one is Cristina
<Daihei> Cristina: We talked lots about Accessibility
<Daihei> One of the reasons is Accessibility Act
<Daihei> It's a very important one
<Daihei> European act mandate is to request publishing industry to comply with European Directive
<Daihei> We are collaborating with EPUB WG
<ivan> Draft mapping document :
<Daihei> Happy to say it is compliant with the Directive
<ivan> Soon-to-be published official note is:
<Daihei> Both Schema and Onix will fulfill the requirements
<Daihei> Documents are now provided and now with publishers organization in Europe
<Daihei> Commission will avoid mandate
<Daihei> Standard specifications for European Directive
<Daihei> Part of the Directive, we need to do not much also with WCAG
<Daihei> Commission will decide by the end of June, we can update you in our July call
<Daihei> Requests to comply with requirements, but also require interoperable to requirements from European Commissions
<Daihei> Cristina: EPUB, ONIX, Schema,
<Daihei> European Federation of blinds.... to move faster with new requests
<Daihei> Liisa: Could you clairfy on requirements for backlist?
<Daihei> Cristina: Backlist should be included
<Daihei> It may be more complex but we are to deal with it to include backlist
<Daihei> Simon: Backlist requirement is a huge demand to publishers including image based one
<Daihei> Cristina: For the service, not the title
<Daihei> Simon: It would be enormous requirements
<Daihei> Cristina: Of course, it is not only for trade, but for educational publishers as well
<Daihei> Demonstrating title by title is a huge work
<Daihei> So, we are still in discussion to solve this issue
<Daihei> Cristina: Still not clear as to how to deal with the issue if this is for title by title, etc.
<Daihei> Cristina: Educational publishers may be difficult to do, because there are so many images
<Daihei> Semantic tagging, etc.
<Daihei> Laurent: Directive is done in terms of wording, which can be decided country by country
<Daihei> Cristina: It may not be country by country, Commission will decide
<Daihei> We are working with Italian Government, France is doing the same
<Daihei> Disproportion of the work, we need to consider that
<Daihei> Websites are always changing, but eBooks are always on the market
<Daihei> Next year we should have better understanding, also from European Federation
<Daihei> Audibook, Audio files not in the directive.
<Daihei> Liisa: If it is in a service, and not by title, then reading system is something everybody is responsible?
<Daihei> Cristina: Yes, reading solution is.
<Daihei> Schema, ONIX, Format of the publishers, metadata, payment, every element in the ecosystem is to be compliant
<Daihei> George: Task Force is finalizing the best practices to be easily understood, which is coming soon
<Daihei> For libraries, same requirements are imposed?
<Daihei> Cristina: Libraries are not in the same requirements.
<Daihei> Liisa: Any other questions?
<Daihei> Thank you all the guests
<Daihei> Hope to see some of you tonight!
<Daihei> Cristina: Pajama call!
Date 22/23 June 2021
EU and Accessibility Act—What You Need to Know Now
Daihei: special PBG Conference every 3 months
Cristina: there is a
European directive that is now in the phase of legislation
… will enter in force in 2025
… will be mandatory for everyone in Europe and
everyone who wants to sell content in Europe
… in phase of National legislation and some items
under discussion at EU level
… the adoption of formats and standards for metadata
… directive has already noted EPUB and ONIX and Schema
… looking at ebooks as a service and not a product
… these standards are compliant with the requirements
of the directive
… have done a mapping and are happy they are compliant
… may adopt these standards and not request a new
standard
… same standards already in use for the industry
… metadata standards for ONIX and schema.org that are
used for market and reading solutions
… described to the commission how these standards are
managed and maintained
… they wanted rules that are open, inter operable and
consensus based standards
… these are all standards like that
… the document and open position paper has been
adopted by the European Federation of publishers
… also the Federation of the Blind and other orgs
support
… should have more information to update on this by
next month
… mapping and accessibility guideline will be
published as a note of the W3C EPUB WG
… the letter: https://
Daihei: explains in Japanese
Cristina: share letter and offers that it can be translated into Japanese to be helpful
Cristina: question before
about the backlist, and by 2025 all ebooks should
… considering as a "service" it seems it would mean
all the titles that should be compliant
… only way to exclude is to show a disproportionate
burden to comply
… but that seems it would be hard to prove and this is
still under discussion
… backlist and burden - the commission says only
audiobook are not included in the directive
… audio + text, should synchronize with the text
Daihei: explains
Daihei: explained that the
backlist might require title by title excuses and
… that they could provide information for the industry
of the enormous job to comply for full backlist
Daihei: questions?
Kidachi-san: from the
position of APL and the Japanese regulatory
… discriminatory actions against anyone with
disabilities will be in place in 3 years
… the way that now the EU act goes forward, it is even
more severe
… what Japan should do with the industry, cope with
the Japanese regulatory and make
… publications more accessible
,,,Japanese laws have no severe deadline, but it is time to discuss more accessibility
Cristina: in Europe not
everyone is moving yet
… work with LIA on fiction and non-fiction and now
starting to be others
… from the reading system platforms as well and asking
for more support
… in Italy legislation says all textbooks should have
digital version
… one of the biggest issues is image description
Daihei: explains
Murata: comment, the IDPF
version of EPUB accessibility was submitted to ISO as an ISO standard
… ISO committee will deliver a JIS standard to be
delivered by June 2022
… welcome publishing participation and support
Presentation of NetGalley and Shelf App Using Readium and LCP
Daihei: intro Fran Toolan, CEO of Firebrand and NetGalley
Fran: thank you and Mary
Pratt is here with me as well as Hadrien who has been our partner at
De Marque
… hello to new Media Do colleagues!
… agenda: context on the co, where we were when we
decided to build the app, Mary
… will explain how we built and the teams and then
we'll have time for questions
… NetGalley to get word of mouth buzz going about
books
… in the US and UK, and launched in Japan, France and
Germany in 2021
… based on Readium, uses LCP and OPDS
… may have some work to do on accessibility
… audio is very popular right now and there are many
audio only publishers
… knew that audio is a difficult animal because there
are no good standards for putting files together
… did not have a good solution for highly illustrated
titles
… had to take matters into our own hands and make our
own platform
… also had concern for the Adobe platform and whether
it might fail
… had a partnership with Feedbooks and Adrian was a
partner
… they are now De Marque and a logical partner for
this work
… had some constraints, have to provide files the way
a consumer wants them
… have to provide with Adobe DRM, with sending to
kindle app and with social DRM
… that is at the request of publishers and readers and
need to get books into the hands of influencers
… needed to control the audio environment
… audio didn't have a standard player
… industry moving towards open source from EDRlab and
Readium
Daihei: explains how to ask more questions of Fuji
Mary: start with a few
stats, launched the app in the US and UK in July 2020
… 96K members have downloaded, 65% iOS, 35% Android
… Audiobooks are big- 3k files ingested, 155k
downloads, but a challenge
… LCP has been great, 42k files converted to LCP and
415k downloads
… no complaints or comments it is so seamless
… NetGalley is a white label version of the app built
by De Marque and by Hadrien
… NetGalley team needed to build a website and data
feeds (OPDS) to show members what they could access
… Firebrand cloud provides content delivery and DRM
… also the licenses
… uploads and manifests for audio as well
… EDRLab built the LCP to protect PDF as a part of
this
… tricky to work with the different technologies and 4
different development teams working
… closely together and Hadrien led the project
… has been a really great experience
… collaboration is important with challenges and
audiobooks were the most challenging
… launched only with one option for listening- full
unprotected downloads
… had complaints from listeners who had small devices
or not slow connections
… have made many improvements to reduce the bitrate
and filesizes
… moved downloads to CloudFront service and introduced
secure streaming solutions
… that was in April 2021
… security piece allowed that individual tracks could
be served with expiry links
… few key takeaways
… users expect a seamless experience, regardless of
what they have
… they can be very vocal
… broad user testing is critical, given the wide
variety of phones and OSs
… asked users who had already given feedback and got
their buy-in
… that got positive reviews and helped
… Apple and google are their own challenges--for iOS
it was getting the app reviewed
… had to delay the first launch
… providing a secure seamless experience that requires
a lot of pieces to come together across
… multiple teams and it came together to make
something we were excited about
… anticipated questions: were there improvements to
the experience or content?
… we want to improve illustrated files and audiobooks
and we really improved that
… how were audiobooks fitting into the environment for
getting buzz going?
… we wanted to get members the books in the experience
they wanted and more of them want audio
Fran: question of were there
opportunities in 2020?
… audio was an opportunity and publishers were
reaching out more to readers directly
… what is next?
… now that there is a contained ecosystem, now that we
can take a book from the whole environment
… we can help and facilitate with publishers taking
things further and we have several
… initiatives to expand the infrastructure to handle
volume and change
… the ways that publishers can use the NetGalley
platform to reach out to constituents
Daihei: questions?
Daihei: ask question of Hadrien- what made you decide to use OPDS?
Hadrien: used in a number of
ways in the app, used in the bookshelf, communicates the metadata
… from the OPDS and not the epub itself
… it is used for download, stream, stream and then
download
… it makes LCP seamless
… OPDS sends all the LCP information in the background
… it is also used to handle authentication
… it is also used in some apps for navigating
catalogs, browse, search, and other things for libraries
… it has taken some time, for OPDS, LCP, Readium
mobile - years for each
Daihei: congratulations on how this all works
Murata: questions: the use
of accessibility metadata by Netgalley? Does Netgalley allow users
… to select epubs based on accessibility metadata
Fran: not at this point
… users request access to books on the website and get
access on their app
… do not see much accessibility info in ONIX at this
pint
Murata: Do you allow people to use epub readers to choose their own that works for accessibility?
Fran: not at this point, LCP is used by our reader, also allow Adobe, Social DRM and no DRM
Liisa: many of the books in
NetGalley (at least for PRH) are pre-pub and more like print galleys,
not all
… the final EPUB and accessibility features are in
place at this point
… good question, though
Digital Library Market in Japan
Takeshi: digital library
market in Japan are focused on public
… reach 200 cities and towns and 1794 municipalities
and 11% of market
… not the exact number of public libraries, but is
where local governments have introduced
… digital lending under their umbrella
… can be a number of libraries under each local
government
… first digital library started in 2007 and have grown
in 2020-2021 to be much larger
… reason is covid-19
… lots of libraries stopped operations and had digital
lending to be applied
… at the same time the government provided stimulus of
40B USD, some of this to cover library support
… looking back at previous years, awareness and
content
… few content for the libraries and publishers didn't
permit titles in the libraries
… there were under 300 titles
… the budget structure of the cities and town takes
1-3 years to get the budget
… so for 10 years things were small
… with Overdrive and Media Do, expanded to 3.7M titles
from 5000 publishers, from 85 countries
… started business in 2014 and was hard to promote
English titles in Japan
… the libraries were partners and the funds from last
year were used to expand
… the accessibility for world is WCAG 2.1
… for Japan it is that they recommend WCAG2.0/ISO/JIS
8341-3:2016
… from the ministry of internal affairs and
communications
… now that WCAG 3.0 is being discussed, the rest of
world is using WCAG 2.1
… developed Japan Industry Standard, JIS to be used
within the framework of WCAG 2.0
… digital lending system in Japan needs to be
compliant with this specification
… we ask to libraries to use overdrive system to help
with this
… we should think about how to respond to this
Daihei: application of
accessibility system, Voyager browser based system helps with
compliance
… not built into any of the other reading systems in
Japan yet
… must cope with requirements for service providers
and publishers
jkamata: explains how Voyager is working (Daihei to fill in details)
Daihei: to summarize,
Voyager would like to make it easy for everyone to have easy access to
content
… learned more than 20 years ago that some who have
difficulties the print book with paper can't be reorganized or easy
… TTS allows them to hear and understand the content
… Voyager Japan has been working to make the content
easy for everyone and bring authors and readers closer
… accessibility implemented for the reading world
Daihei: questions?