W3C

– DRAFT –
Publishing Steering Committee

10 March 2023

Attendees

Present
AvneeshSingh, Bill_Kasdorf, GeorgeK, ivan, liisamk_, tzviya, wendyreid, wolfgang
Regrets
-
Chair
Tzviya
Scribe
tzviya, wendyreid

Meeting minutes

<tzviya> Date: 2023-03-10

<tzviya> https://w3c.github.io/publ-maintenance-wg-charter/

tzviya: Ivan shared a proposed charter for a maintenance working group
… any comments?

GeorgeK: Looks really good

tzviya: One thing
… I noticed is we'd be liasing with would be the BD comics and manga group
… not sure if it's functional

ivan: No idea

tzviya: It doesn't really matter, we might want to reach out

ivan: It's one of the questionable CGs, the other is the Sync Media CG

AvneeshSingh: Discussion has slowed down and I've had to divert Marisa's attention
… the group is still there and it'll be worked on when it's the right time

ivan: We'll keep it then, for the other one, I'm not sure

<AvneeshSingh> a11y discov vocab

AvneeshSingh: I've copied another CG, the one for Accessibility Discoverability Vocabulary

<AvneeshSingh> coordination group: https://www.w3.org/community/a11y-discov-vocab/

ivan: Would like to keep Dave in as chair, but I know we had to fight last time

tzviya: I don't think it'll be the same fight

ivan: Would prefer to keep him in, we'll answer questions if they happen

tzviya: I still have my notes from last time

ivan: We do need his approval

tzviya: We'll convince him

ivan: If we're ok with the charter, we can start the process
… we'll have to figure out how to communicate it

tzviya: I don't think we'll have opposition to a maintenance charter

<Bill_Kasdorf> In section 5.1 you have the ARIA WG in twice

ivan: I'll do it all next week then

AvneeshSingh: Ivan, you mentioned we won't be adding new metadata vocabs
… does a maintenance group not allow us to do so, is there complexity in the process?

ivan: I don't think that there is a problem, what metadata are you referring to?

AvneeshSingh: There's a few new fields for a11y conformance
… would it be blocked?

ivan: It's not a separate, new vocabulary?

AvneeshSingh: It's new fields

ivan: These are new terms, not a new vocabulary

AvneeshSingh: One more, role of the director?

ivan: Not up to me

tzviya: Director-free has not been approved, once it is approved, the language of the charters will change

ivan: The timing won't work out, the language stays in
… I marked it so it can be finalized at some point

Bill_Kasdorf: My question, with regards to identifiers, ISCC is looking to be close to ISO confirmation

ivan: It's out of scope for us to define, but we're fine to use

Bill_Kasdorf: That makes sense

tzviya: Looks like we're good to move forward to the groups, then team
… tried to scrutinize this from an opposition perspective, I think we are ok

ivan: We'll see

tzviya: AB is working on how to clean things up before objections happen
… next item is a legal update

GeorgeK: [Update]

<Zakim> tzviya, you wanted to clarify

tzviya: Next item, what's going on?

GeorgeK: CSUN is next week
… presentation on EPUB 3.3
… 3 presentations total on EPUB, publishing, a11y metadata
… full slate

tzviya: Exciting!

liisamk_: Daihei and Cristina and I are looking at doing another conference day session on AI since it's a hot topic at the moment
… Daihei is looking for people to possibly present
… also want to look at the document from the salon to find topics to discuss
… if there's anything we want to discuss let me know

tzviya: AI and what?

liisamk_: It's wide open, people are talking about it right now for publishing
… it's interesting, what's the good, whats the bad, what are people trying to use it for
… our community would be interested

ivan: Can I give two examples?
… just saw this morning that DuckDuckGo introduced a new feature for it to provide human summaries of info you're searching for
… could summarize all sorts of content
… the other is less fun, but it's an excellent tool for plagiarizing books

ivan: Would be difficult to trace back
… a non-trivial issue
… discussed in scholarly publishing circles
… should ChatGPT be used as a co-author

liisamk_: Daihei mentioned some Japanese publishers considering AI could take over lower level authors so publishers could focus on A-list authors
… it's uncomfortable, but it shows there's a lot of ideas out there

wendyreid: It is an interesting topic. Clark's World is a scifi/fan publication with a wide open policy, but they had to close it. It was flooded with AI generated content.
… There's discussion about whether it was a targeted attack
… It's worth discussing the challenged. Aligns with the anti-counterfeiting work. Being able to verify the source could be even more important than it was before.

tzviya: I think it's important to talk about the challenges without fear-mongering
… also talk about the advantages
… there's a lot of nuance to the discussion, we should have a conversation about it as a new art form, the advantages and disadvantages
… time savings, we have to approach this carefully

ivan: I regard it as positive, but we do have to be careful

tzviya: AIs are really good at summarizing long-winded documents
… and really long emails

wolfgang: We'll have two presentations this month from Zheng and Gauthier, things like 3D and non-textual content
… implemented solutions and it's part of the discussion that has been happening in the education TF
… there is a question of best practices
… Sue Neuhaus's interviews with librarians, scholarly publications like theses with games
… what format is best
… counterfeit TF is also making good progress
… and a11y TF is in good shape
… what we'd like to have is more input
… more use cases, more people bringing ideas
… just bring your pain points

GeorgeK: Going back to the AI, one of the big areas in cognitive accessibility is simplified language
… it's a difficult language, simplifying a web page, it could have a huge benefit
… taking a chapter written at a 12th grade level and recasting it at a lower reading level would be fascinating
… one of the potentialsi

tzviya: I remembered my 2nd point, the legal ramifications are complex, who owns copyright
… how does rights management work
… if you publish a book and the bot on DuckDuckGo summarizes it

Wendy: All quiet for EPUB as we wait for it to move forward. We haven't received any comments. I have to follow up with the TAG, who wants us to summarize more
… We are allowed to go to PR on Apr 11
… I will schedule something for FXL A11y soon
… Both FXL A11y and Virtual Locators are kind of stuck, and we need volunteers for writing and/or implementing
… We are running out of time. We could take these TFs to Maintenance WG or shift to CG

ivan: I think moving it to the CG is the appropriate thing to do
… for the information, next tuesday a new note will be published, the mapping of epub:type to ARIA
… next tuesday

wolfgang: Two questions, the FXL A11y, would it be part of the A11y TF or on its own
… it does have a specific focus, or would it merge into the A11y TF
… Virtual Locators is a unique topic that could be it's own TF
… in both cases, I'm happy to assist

Bill_Kasdorf: My concern would be it's two groups of people right now doing the FXL work and the A11y CG work, intersecting but different groups

tzviya: Is it possible to finish this work before EPUB WG ends?

wendyreid: It would be great to have something to work on in the maintenance WG

tzviya: I have a use case for publication manifest and education

GeorgeK: With the new voices that are just so good, the natural voices from Microsoft, Google, Apple, if we're looking at how an EPUB can be converted to audiobooks or media overlays

ivan: These things are better suited for a CG, doing it in the WG would be challenging for membership
… this type of work may end up defining features that need to be retrofitted into the standard
… the right path for that is to incubate in the CG, take it to the WG or create a new one

wolfgang: We'll need people who are more active, we have some already, but we need even more
… the chairs rely on the input of members
… people to take responsibility
… as leads or members
… we have good examples already
… but also some challenges
… ideally attract more members

ivan: I think we'll have to be proactive with managing groups

tzviya: Great discussion
… the majority of our work is shifting to the CG, we do need to find something for the maintenance WG to work on
… I'll be away in April
… need someone to handle the call for april

wendyreid: [volunteers]

liisamk_: OverDrive is the first retailer to see who has implemented the new epubcheck

tzviya: Vitalsource has as well

Minutes manually created (not a transcript), formatted by scribe.perl version 210 (Wed Jan 11 19:21:32 2023 UTC).

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No scribenick or scribe found. Guessed: wendyreid

Maybe present: Wendy

All speakers: AvneeshSingh, Bill_Kasdorf, GeorgeK, ivan, liisamk_, tzviya, Wendy, wendyreid, wolfgang

Active on IRC: AvneeshSingh, Bill_Kasdorf, GeorgeK, ivan, liisamk_, tzviya, wendyreid, wolfgang