– DRAFT –
(MEETING TITLE)

<GeorgeK> I am on zoom, do I have the right room?

<Gautier> I am on zoom too, still waiting for the reunion to open

<ChrisOliverOttawa> Me too. Says the host has another meeting in progress.

Feedback for User experience guide for displaying accessibility metadata.

AvneeshSingh: we were at daisy meetings last week after which there was an accessibility camp hosted by lia where we discussed metadata guide - received feedback from French and Italian publishers

<AvneeshSingh> https://www.w3.org/publishing/a11y/UX-Guide-metadata/principles/

AvneeshSingh: going to summarize that feedback for the group

chiara_dm: I was part of the focus group and we gathered two groups and asked them about accessible reading in general and what the main issues are and then discussed proposed solutions for displaying accessibility metadata
… first we asked what are the most critical problems and the answer was that complex books like textbooks with complex images, layouts, mathematics, etc. while simpler books like novels do not have issues
… users want to know if images are described and they check if there is a preview to see if it accessible
… want to know if they can read by paragraph, line and character to study the text and find spelling or words, etc.
… want to know if books are pdf or epub, and whether epubs are version 2 or 3, want to know if there are headings, high quality tables
… also DRM is important to know because it can block access to the book
… whether fixed layout or reflowable is important because fxl can cause issues
… users would like to have two levels of information - high level overview versus detailed info
… first level would be short and concise - simple information about usability

gpellegrino: with this feedback and the French feedback from EDRLab we discussed different approaches to displaying metadata
… the language for rendering the metadata should be as non-technical as possible whenever possible
… accessibility features must be displayed or rendered in a harmonized way - with the same language - so it doesn't matter where users access the information
… displaying of metadata should have two levels - first level may be a graphical icon with a few words that can be standardized
… the second level would provide greater meaning - should be from the user's point of view, what they can do
… third level would be schema, onix, marc metadata
… group metadata by area or purpose - translations should allow for some variations based on regional needs
… the document should not enforce in which way the information is displayed - but should be structured
… we may need to request changes to some metadata standards - not easy to determine if content is screen reader friendly from onix right now
… we also made some specific notes on standards but not important for this discussion
… at the end there was discussion on what metadata is needed for the Europrean accessibility act - some metadata to tell users that some books are not accessible

AvneeshSingh: the two levels of metadata is an important piece - we should not be obsessed about the terms like screen reader friendly - we need to focus on terms and making them translatable

GeorgeK: need to have a translation reference so we can get the metadata translated once without everyone having to do it separately

<Gautier> https://www.amazon.com/Invisible-Voices-Presence-Punishment-1750-1900-ebook/dp/B0B4BKSCK6/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=#detailBullets_feature_div

Gautier: Amazon is now displaying some information about accessibility
… shows that text-to-speech is enabled, etc.
… some systems won't make a link to xml resources, like certifier report, because it is a security threat

AvneeshSingh: what are people's views on having two levels - basic versus detailed? How do we define these two levels.

GeorgeK: I like the idea of exposing what the format is - may be just a simple statement in the summary - difference in metadata for a web page or catalogue versus what is inside the publication
… I like the two-level idea - should just be reorganizing our guidelines

<gpellegrino> +1 to Naomi

Naomi: for the format, we can probably identify that from other metadata and don't need it in the summary
… for the two-level is this only about display in retail or changing the opf metadata?

AvneeshSingh: only for retail

Gautier: some retailers won't implement the second level so the first level should state all the needed information - you don't always have a lot of space so you have to make choices
… how to say you're not accessible because you have an exception - need to be careful about this - publishers may not want to state this so directly
… need to talk to publishers in Europe about how they want to state this

AvneeshSingh: There is a code in onix to say publication is inaccessible

Madeleine: right, there isn't a way to say a publication isn't accessible in schema.org - had no accessibility features but that is different - way of not committing to saying what is present

GeorgeK: that a book may be inaccessible to some but not others is a real problem with making such a statement - need to know more about what is driving this

AvneeshSingh: right, audiobook may be inaccessible to a deaf person but not blind

<Madeleine> accessibilityFeature=none is still available in the vocabulary

GeorgeK: sounds like a statement that the accessibility is unknown because of an exception

gpellegrino: for this issue I would prefer a different point of view - need to say it is not compliant rather than inaccesible - more focus on conformsTo

<Madeleine> +1 to Gregorio

Naomi: not meeting the conformance requirements of the accessibility act is not the same as being inaccessible - a lot of people can access all of the content - compliant v. non-compliant is a better way of thinking about it

MiiaK: I agree with gpellegrino and Naomi - I wonder if there is a risk with the two levels if retails only show one - the basic level might be the only one that publishers start providing

Gautier: accessiblity metadata is part of the specification so it has to be present - if I don't create accessible content the metadata won't be there and there will be nothing for retailers to show - if I don't remediate a file because of an exception I won't add accessibility metadata - may be able to say that no metadata is available

GeorgeK: I don't recall if we have guidelines on what to do if there is no accessibility metadata. Still helpful to identify the format in the metadata even if the reading system can identify it

AvneeshSingh: next steps - we will have discussions on what is level one and two, what are the main metadata that are not accessibility information but that we want to include
… I will create issues for these in the tracker to continue to discuss

GeorgeK: we may need to look at finishing the summary document before tackling the other work

Gautier: when a publisher does not include information the guide does say to provide a statement to the user that no information was provided

<Gautier> From https://www.w3.org/2021/09/UX-Guide-metadata-1.0/principles/ : When a publisher does not provide any accessibility metadata for a publication, a statement should be displayed to the user informing them that no information was supplied.

AvneeshSingh: IFLA did a survey of accessibility metadata in libraries

Results of IFLA survey on use of MARC metadata in libraries.

kirsiy: most of the libraries are producing daisy books
… we will have a webinar later to discuss the results
… 28 libraries responded - majority were from Europe
… all have daisy books but half had epub
… 15 use marc21 to describe the features of the book - has two fields: 341 and 532
… most libraries are not using both - some are satisfied with only using one and a few did not have tools to edit the other field
… each library has a different way of displaying the metadata
… asked librarians what they thought was critical for their users - all thought the type of publication is important (braille, etc.), then text, narration, navigation features - only a third felt text alternatives to images was important
… it is important to give guidelines on how to use the metadata in a standard way

ChrisOliverOttawa: we are at an interesting point because there is a growing awareness of accessibility metadata and people aren't sure about the best way to do it

AvneeshSingh: having a crosswalk is not enough - also need info about how to use the fields

GeorgeK: is what we're doing here usable in the library community?

ChrisOliverOttawa: I think a lot of the communities don't have as close a connection to the publishers - seeing what retail is doing does condition the expectations of library users of the information - need to get a broader message out through ifla

AvneeshSingh: we should have good liaison with ifla

Update from accessibility summary leads.

GeorgeK: I have created issue 135 with everything I think needs to be done - one of the table heads is suggested summary - seems like more of an example - should we change it to "example statement"?

<Naomi> +1

<AvneeshSingh> https://htmlpreview.github.io/?https://github.com/w3c/publ-a11y/blob/main/drafts/schema-a11y-summary/index.html

GeorgeK: if there is a problem with identifying reading order - like choose your own adventure - there should be a statement
… do we need more examples than the two that we have? only one in English and one in Japanese

AvneeshSingh: the group members may not be aware of the progress you have made. maybe you should send an email asking people to review and and comment