Meeting minutes
<wendyreid> date: 2023-01-31
<Cristina> +p
<gpellegrino> wendyreid: I still didn't understand what may be the EU reaction to the standardization of ISO EPUB Accessibility 1.1
<gpellegrino> ... one thing to have in mind is that EPUB has to be backward compatible
<gpellegrino> Cristina: We convinced the EU commission that EPUB, ONIX and Schema.org are in line with the requirements EAA
<gpellegrino> ... so they didn't mandate for a harmonized standards
<gpellegrino> ... one important thing for not going through the mandate is that we need something solid to point to publishers when they want to create accessible EPUBs
<MURATA> Disagree
<gpellegrino> ... going with a EU harmonized standards will take too many time
<gpellegrino> ... if there's is an ISO for EPUB Accessibility 1.1, this will trigger an evaluation from the EU to understand if ISO is ok
<MURATA> DIsagree
<gpellegrino> ... is not about ISO, is that it brings complexity from a process point of view with the EU commission
<gpellegrino> MURATA: I agree with the introduction of Cristina, but disagree with the conclusion
<gpellegrino> ... have an ISO makes it simpler for everyone
<MURATA> MURATA: The best way to stop EU from creating an EU Harmonised standard is to create an ISO/IEC standard. Since the European Union has been a WTO member since 1 January 1995, the Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade applies to EU. Section 2.4 of TBT is shown below:
<MURATA> 2.4 Where technical regulations are required and relevant international standards exist or their completion is imminent, Members shall use them, or the relevant parts of them, as a basis for their technical regulations except when such international standards or relevant parts would be an ineffective or inappropriate means for the fulfilment of the legitimate objectives pursued, for instance because of fundamental climatic or geographical factors o[CUT]
<MURATA> WTO (https://
wendyreid: so this is only about EPUB Accessibility 1.1
… what will happen if we have an ISO and the EU mandates for a harmonized standard?
… do you think we'll have comments?
… if we have only editorial comments, then it is something we can manage in W3C to adapt the content
… also there is not only EU, we have to think about other countries
Cristina: I think this can create a problem with everyone who wants to sell EPUB in Europe (not only European publishers)
… at the beginning we asked the commission about ISO and they told us about the process
… this means to restart with the EU commission
shiestyle: I think is a risk to standardize EPUB specs to ISO, also thinking about future versions of EPUB
<MURATA> DIsagree. See Unicode, OOXML, PDF, ODF, ....
shiestyle: if they will not update new EPUB version to ISO
… we'll have a discrepancy
AvneeshSingh: EPUB 3.0 and 3.0.1 were made ISO standard by Korea
<MURATA> Fast-trackc
AvneeshSingh: it was submitted to ISO by Korea. If this happens fragmentation may happen
… there are different rules to move to ISO
… EN 301549
… this is an harmonized standard for WCAG 2
… why did the EU decided to move to a harmonized standard for this
MURATA: EN version was based on WCAG 2.0, now it is updated to 2.1
… if we read the rule this should be disallowed
… one could argue that this is a minor update
<MURATA> EPUB Accessibility 1.0 is ALREADY an ISO/IEC standard
Cristina: this is exactly the issue that we discussed with the commission
… because the harmonized standard process can look for other standards or improvement
… if we move EPUB Accessibility to 1.1 we'll trigger this process
<wendyreid> mgarrish:
<MURATA> Exactly!
mgarrish: trying to understand... we already have EPUB and EPUB Accessibility in ISO
… can we say it is an update?
Cristina: no, this is why we mapped the new version of EPUB Accessibility 1.1 to the European Accessibility Act
MURATA: I still don't understand since we already have EPUB Accessibility 1.0 in ISO
<shiestyle> EPUB 3.1 and 3.2 don't have ISO versions.
AvneeshSingh: Gregorio and Cristina and Luc did a full mapping to the EPUB Accessibility 1.1 telling that is was different from EPUB 1.0
wendyreid:
wendyreid: we have ISO for EPUB 3.0.1, not for 3.2 since it is a working group note. Korea may be interested in porting EPUB 3.3 to ISO
<MURATA> I believe that there was a contract between IDPF and Korea. Based on it, Korea did the submission.
wendyreid: do you think there may be other countries? We don't want fragmentation
… also since we don't have harmonized standards for EAA, I think this is confusing for people trying to implement it
… I think having harmonized standard for EPUB Accessibility may only help
AvneeshSingh: for having EPUB Accessibility 1.1 as ISO it may take different months, and EU we'll se it near the 2025
… does this time help? or would it harm the industry?
… we'll publishers wait?
<MURATA> Disagree.
shiestyle: one more reason to disagree to ISO standard. I think it's good time to stop to move EPUB specs to ISO, since it is the first in the W3C world
Cristina: it's a W3C recomandation, I think it can be trusted anyway: it is open, based on consensus
<MURATA> No, it's not an internatinoal standard.
Cristina: this is what is request from the EU
… I don't understand why we should move to ISO, since W3C recs are recognized
MURATA: in Japan W3C recomandations are not recognized by the state as international standards
… this is why not ISO documents are not referenced in official documentation
YOU TOLD ME THAT SCRIBING WAS SIMPLE TODAY :)
wendyreid: what other countries rely on ISO?
… India, Korea, Japan
<MURATA> Prof. Ishikawa, an ex-vice-chair of the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) of the United Nations, spoke with experts on international laws. All experts agree that ISO or IEC standards are international standards. Some do not think ITU recommendations are international standards.
<MURATA> Few consider IEEE or W3C specifications as international standards.
AvneeshSingh: for the Indian government ISO is really important
… the process for making a W3C rec an ISO is only about "adding a cover"
… we may get comments, but we'll update our document, so it'll be always open
<MURATA> I believe that JP publishers have no plans to use EPUB Accessibility 1.0.
<MURATA> Disagree.
Cristina: I personally see issues in going to ISO for EPUB Accessibility 1.1 for the publishing industry
shiestyle: I think that Japanese government look for ISO standard only if it is available
<MURATA> Disagree
shiestyle: if it is not available they'll look for W3C standard
AvneeshSingh: the process will take time
… if EPUB Accessibility will become standard in two years
… will this create problems in EU?
Cristina: I think we should inform the commission of the process of ISO standardization
… we cannot do this "hiding" the process
MURATA: I want to say that Japanese governement doesn't accepts not ISO standard
… like it is happening for WCAG 2.1 (?)
… so in this way Japanese textbooks cannot adopt EPUB Accessibility
shiestyle: this is the fragmentation problem we have to discuss
AvneeshSingh: I think that both sides have good points
… it is difficult to have an agreement
… maybe we can ask Cristina to understand if there's a way to go to ISO without hurting EU
… or maybe we can ask Makoto if we may delay some months the standardization of EPUB Accessibility 1.1
… we can de-attach ISO decision from rec track for EPUB Accessibility
wendyreid: yes, we have one week we can wait before going to rec track
… if Cristina can investigate more, it'll be great
… we'll have a maintenance WG for EPUB fi we want to wait for some time to then decide to move to PAS process for ISO
<MURATA> No
shiestyle: do we have to decide PAS process with rec track? If we can de-attach this two decisions we can continue to discuss
WE HAVE AN AGREEMENT
(please delete my comments)
<Cristina> Gregorio best scriber ever
<shiestyle> Thanks Gregorio!
wendyreid: plase Cristina try to find some information so we can have all the info for making a good decision
<wendyreid> rragent, make logs public