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[DRAFT] Digital Publishing Task Force Work Statement

The Digital Publishing Task Force is a task force of the Accessible Rich Internet Applications Working Group (ARIA WG) and the Digital Publishing Interest Group (DPub IG). It assists this Working Group with the work identified below.

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Status

This is a Work Statement for the Digital Publishing Task Force. It has been accepted by the ARIA WG and the DPub IG and the Task Force is active.

Objective

The Digital Publishing Interest Group and Accessible Rich Internet Applications Working Group will work jointly to create a vocabulary of digital publishing terms. The terms will add specificity to HTML elements, allowing for clear interaction with assistive technolgies, easy reusability. and native validation. The joint task force will write use cases and compare existing vocabularies, including IDPF's EPUB Structural Semantic Vocabulary and ARIA Roles to create a recommended list of terms. This will require agreement regarding a non-AT-exclusive usage of the role attribute, centralized vs decentralized vocabulary approaches, and clear understanding of the native host language semantics in case of unrecognized values is clarified. To ensure validation and usage within HTML5, this will also require using the "applicable specifications" gloss to enable usage of values beyond those allowed by HTML5.

Scope of Work

The task force will:

Enable Assistive Technologies for e-books

The Digital Publishing TF will develop features for to enable the following assistive technology features in e-books:

  • Improved Navigation;
  • Contextual Cues.

Enable User Agent Behavior

An additional benefit of vocabulary of publishing terms is that the terms can describe specific behaviors to user agents. Implementation of behaviors has been seen using the EPUB vocabulary on some ebook reading systems. These include:

Address public feedback

The Digital Publishing TF will respond to input received from the public on documents prepared by the task force. It will propose responses and make edits as needed. It conducts this activity on behalf of the parent Working Group that actually publishes the documents.

Coordinate with other Working Groups

The Digital Publishing TF will serve as the primary mechanism for coordination with other Working Groups on WAI-ARIA features, integration of WAI-ARIA into host languages, and mapping of technology features to accessibility APIs. It will proactively coordinate with Working Groups that develop technologies for which accessibility API mappings are proposed, and will respond to coordination requests from other groups that express an interest that relates to the scope of the task force.

Approach

The Digital Publishing TF is a joint task force of the Accessible Rich Internet Applications Working Group (ARIA WG) and the Digital Publishing Interest Group (DPub IG). Accordingly, the Digital Publishing TF operates under the ARIA WG and DPub IG charters. Since only the ARIA WG is chartered to publish Recommendation-track deliverables, normative specifications will be published by the ARIA WG, with approval from the task force and the DPub IG. Non-normative publications (Working Group Notes and other publications) will be jointly published by both sponsoring groups.

Members of the sponsoring groups who have substantive comments on or concerns with Digital Publishing TF publications are expected to raise them in the context of the Digital Publishing TF.

Communication

Digital Publishing TF communications and discussions are visible to the public. The primary means of communication within the task force are:

In addition, to enable the group to work with the PF Working Group:

Members of the public who are not covered by the W3C Patent Policy (see Participation) may send input to the public-aria-comments mailing list. Messages should clearly indicate the deliverable to which they are related.

Participation

Any member of the ARIA WG may participate in the Digital Publishing TF. Members of the Digital Publishing Interest Group who wish to participate actively must join the ARIA WG, because of the patent policy commitments required for publications.

Participants should expect to dedicate 3 to 4 hours per week for Digital Publishing TF work, which is considered part of the overall work commitment to the ARIA WG:

Participants may also join Digital Publishing TF sub-groups. Sub-groups take on specific assignments for the Digital Publishing TF. Currently active sub-groups are listed on the Digital Publishing TF wiki.

If you are interested in becoming a participant of the Digital Publishing TF or have any questions regarding its work, contact Michael Cooper.

Current Publications

The following is a list of documents that are managed by the Digital Publishing TF:

Facilitation

Staff contacts from the ARIA WG oversee attention to W3C Process with respect to the chartered requirements of the respective WGs. The Facilitators set agenda, lead meetings, determine consensus, and are the primary liaison to the WGs.

Facilitators

Patent Policy

This Task Force is part of the ARIA Charter, which operates under the W3C Patent Policy (5 February 2004 Version). W3C maintains a public list of any patent disclosures made in connection with the deliverables of the ARIA WG.