W3C

– DRAFT –
APA Weekly Teleconference

17 Jul 2024

Attendees

Present
Angela, Dr_Keith, gautierchomel, Gottfried, janina, NehaJ, PaulG, Roy
Regrets
Alisa_Smith, Jennifer Strickland
Chair
Janina
Scribe
Gottfried

Meeting minutes

Agenda Review & Announcements

discussion on joining the #apa channel on https://webirc.w3.org/#/connect

Round of introductions

Angela: Background in education and accessibility. Transitioned from education to siteimprove. Joined EA wg in Dec, but now discontinued. Disability advocate. Also on LinkedIn.
… Living accessibility every day.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-angela-young/

TPAC 2024 Planning

janina: A lot of meetings are scheduled - more to come.

https://www.w3.org/news-events/w3c-tpac/
… Request this week: Propose breakouts
… If you propose a break-out, please copy me and Matthew

Interim update on WCAG2ICT reivew

https://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/wcag2ict/

<Roy> w3c/a11y-request#88

<Roy> https://www.w3.org/TR/wcag2ict-22/

Note: https://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/wcag2ict/ is the old one. The new one is at https://w3c.github.io/wcag2ict/

NehaJ: My team is reviewing this currently.

janina: And Dr. Keith, and Matthew.

This document originally was created on the request of the US Access Board, and also by the European Commission.
… Group working on it has almost finished. Now requesting review.

Gottfried: Important piece for the next version of EN 301 549 v4.1.1. Please add me to the reviewing group.

NehaJ: I will add you to the Google doc.

EPUB Fixed Layout

janina: Note track document - no formal review process

https://www.w3.org/TR/epub-fxl-a11y/

janina: Concerns about accessibility

janina: A fixed layout EPUB doc will not achieve the level of accessibility as in a regular EPUB doc.

janina: Calling it "accessibility" (title) is not useful.

janina: APA can create a draft comment expressing these concerns.

gautierchomel: I participated in the writing of this document.

gautierchomel: First XML, then HTML, then HTML5. Publishing industry now part of W3C.
… EPUB3 is the gold standard for accessible ebooks.
… There is a need in the publishing industry for fixed layout.
… Print equivalents, academic contexts
… Need for more resilient version of fixed layout.
… Problem: You cannot reflow text.
… Like in PDF.

Two perspectives: (1) Screenreader receives reflowable content. (2) Changes on visual layout possible??
… Screenreader users were not missing anything.
… Better semantics than PDF. Same issues with visual layout as PDF.

PaulG: PDF allows for programmatic reading order. But this document does not address author-controlled reading order.
… Not convinced that this is better than PDF. PDF would handle reading order.
… PDFs have a feature "touchup reading order".

gautierchomel: Reading order is included in this document.

https://www.w3.org/TR/epub-fxl-a11y/#reading-order

PaulG: I don't see a recommendation about author-controlled reading order here.
… How does this doc recommend what to do about reading order. I cannot find this here. Only problems are stated.

gautierchomel: There is no "programmatic reading order" in EPUB.

PaulG: If fixed layout breaks the default order of elements in how they are presented visually, there should be a way to define the reading order.

janina: The question is what does this doc achieve.

PaulG: No recommendation on what to do in these problematic cases.
… We should have the technology of programmatic reading order. What does EPUB bring onto the table here?

gautierchomel: Not a problem in EPUB since it is HTML5..

janina: There is no guidance as to how to achieve accessibility how we expect it.
… Change title to "Accessibility challenges"?
… Or create a spec with normative requirements.
… Since it is a note, there are no recommendations, only issues. It is an exploratory document. But call it different.
… There is a way to have fixed layout and have reflow - but different topic.

PaulG: If EPUB 3.3 has a technical solution of defining a reading order, this doc needs to hint at this solution.

<gautierchomel> there an attached techniques document: https://w3c.github.io/epub-specs/epub33/fxl-a11y-tech/

PaulG: Doc is readable, but not necessarily helping to make docs more accessible.
… The techniques document has useful content here.

janina: We need to discuss this further in APA.

Task Force &&Deliverables Updates

<PaulG> w3c/csswg-drafts#6517

CSS Update (Paul)

PaulG: CSS Media Queries Level 5. Win for user preferences.

Actions check-in

Other business

janina: Meeting adjourned

Minutes manually created (not a transcript), formatted by scribe.perl version 221 (Fri Jul 21 14:01:30 2023 UTC).

Diagnostics

Succeeded: s/introduction/introductions

Succeeded: s/EPUB 3.3 has this/Not a problem in EPUB since it is HTML5.

Maybe present: Note

All speakers: Angela, gautierchomel, Gottfried, janina, NehaJ, Note, PaulG

Active on IRC: Angela, Dr_Keith, gautierchomel, Gottfried, janina, NehaJ, PaulG, Roy, roy__