EPUB 3 Working Group A11y Telco — Minutes

Date: 2021-02-11

See also the Agenda and the IRC Log

Attendees

Present: Avneesh Singh, Wendy Reid, George Kerscher, Matthew Chan, Ben Schroeter, Juliette McShane, Teenya Franklin, Gregorio Pellegrino, Charles LaPierre, Bill Kasdorf

Regrets:

Guests:

Chair: Avneesh Singh

Scribe(s): Matthew Chan

Content:

1. Pending question from previous call: Is level AA required for meeting the functional requirements of European accessibility directive?

Avneesh Singh: See Google doc.

Gregorio Pellegrino: as you remember there are 2 sections for services and for epub in EUAA
… i checked on ebook section, and the min level is WCAG Level A
… but then I checked also the general services section, and there I found the minimum req was Level AA
… and this is because of some reqs on the possibility to change font and color and so on
… these are reqs in the general services, but to be sure, these are reqs for ebooks as well
… so i think the min requirement is Level AA

Avneesh Singh: Ideally, Authors should try to conform to the latest version of WCAG at Level AA, but the formal thresholds they must meet will be defined by local and national laws, or by procurer or distributor requirements.

Avneesh Singh: this is a piece from the ebook accessibility spec
… we decided a couple weeks ago that we should avoid developing this spec according to EUAA
… we want to meet most legislation, including EUAA
… where we strongly recommended Level AA, we can add to the note to say that this is required under EUAA

George Kerscher: also, with so many languages in EU, and the ability to detect languages mid-stream in documents, that is very important
… might also want to highlight this

Avneesh Singh: this is more of an ebook language tag issue, let’s not open that topic right now

George Kerscher: i think its a Level AA req

Bill Kasdorf: so, EUAA will req the ability to change font and color? If so, that completely disqualifies PDF

Gregorio Pellegrino: yes, but the EUAA doesn’t distinguish between RS and formats
… Adobe is developing reflow mode for PDF inside Reader

Bill Kasdorf: that’s really significant!

Proposed resolution: Add text for highlighting that AA is important for meeting European Accessibility Directive. (Avneesh Singh)

George Kerscher: i would add to that the relevance to N.American 508 item

Proposed resolution: Add text for highlighting that AA is important for meeting European Accessibility Directive and section 508. (Avneesh Singh)

Avneesh Singh: and then Matt can do this magic on this

George Kerscher: I’ll check in with Bruce to make sure that what we are saying is correct

Gregorio Pellegrino: +1

Charles LaPierre: +1

Matthew Chan: +1

Ben Schroeter: +1

Wendy Reid: +1

Bill Kasdorf: +1

Juliette McShane: +1

Resolution #1: Add text for highlighting that AA is important for meeting European Accessibility Directive and section 508.

George Kerscher: +1

Gregorio Pellegrino: do you think we need to reference for which of the requirements Level AA is required?

Avneesh Singh: doing it in the spec could break the spec
… the way to do it would be to create another doc and link to it

Charles LaPierre: are you saying that there are only a couple specific things from Level AA that are required? But there could be others from Level AA that EUAA doesn’t require? And therefore you are only complying to parts of Level AA?

Gregorio Pellegrino: yes, so basically you need all of Level A, and some of Level AA

Charles LaPierre: but that’s hard to specify. That you need all of Level A, but only some of Level AA…

Avneesh Singh: that’s why I suggested that this guidance should be in a separate document, so as not to cause confusion

George Kerscher: this separate document, we’ve got this comparison that gpellegrino has done, but maybe the separate document could list EU, 508, and Japan guidance on educational material
… i could email hiroshi
… and these will probably increase over time
… keeping this document is one of the requests made by the business group

Avneesh Singh: let’s get deeper into this separate doc in a future call

Bill Kasdorf: I think we can clearly say that if you only comply at Level A, you will not meet EUAA
… and say, “meet Level AA, with specific attention to fonts, colors”

2. Vote of the task force for first public working draft of EPUB Accessibility 1.1.

Avneesh Singh: See The spec to be published.

Avneesh Singh: we have achieved what we need to go to FPWD
… FPWD is a stake in the ground, to be sure, work will continue after this
… if we approve this, then the spec will go to the full WG for FPWD approval

George Kerscher: +1

Avneesh Singh: where publication will be considered together with the other documents
… the Techniques document is not on Rec track, it will be a note

Ben Schroeter: +1

Matthew Chan: +1

Bill Kasdorf: +1

Gregorio Pellegrino: +1

Juliette McShane: +1

Wendy Reid: +1

Charles LaPierre: +1

Avneesh Singh: +1

Resolution #2: EPUB accessibility 1.1 approved for FPWD

Avneesh Singh: wendyreid to schedule the vote in the main WG

3. Continuing with EU A11y directive

Avneesh Singh: 3. Continuing with theme of European accessibility directive, the following questions were raised by Luc, Gregorio and Cristina. Should we attempt to address this in EPUB Accessibility document or in EPUB 3.3 documents?

Avneesh Singh: all of us want to clarify this, but should we do this clarification in epub a11y, or should we delegate this to somewhere else?

Wendy Reid: good question, some of this falls into epub, but some outside (i.e. the what is an audiobook question)
… maybe say in spec that we should not confuse ebooks and audiobooks, which are separate
… BUT that audiobooks are part of the a11y ecosystem

Bill Kasdorf: +1 to Wendy

Avneesh Singh: is epub a11y the right place, or should that note go into the other spec

Wendy Reid: we could also include it in the overview, but I think it should go into the a11y spec too
… we can put it in 2 places

Cristina Mussinelli: I would prefer to have this in the general document, because different legislation requires different things

Bill Kasdorf: this should also probably be in the audiobook spec
… that an epub with MO is not an audiobook

George Kerscher: i wonder if this would just be an informative section in the a11y spec, to help us with this confusion and what confusion may be caused by the term “full audio”
… trying to define more precisely in the user experience guide

Wendy Reid: +!

Wendy Reid: +1

George Kerscher: a simple informative paragraph before the part on optimized publications would be appropriate

Avneesh Singh: i think an informative note will be okay, and we can trust Matt with this
… optimized publication is not only audio, it also includes braille and those sorts of things

Proposed resolution: add informative note for explaining diff between audio books, media ovelays and read aloud (Avneesh Singh)

Matthew Chan: +1

Bill Kasdorf: +1

Charles LaPierre: +1

Gregorio Pellegrino: +1

Juliette McShane: +1

Wendy Reid: +1

George Kerscher: +1

Ben Schroeter: +1

Resolution #3: add informative note for explaining diff between audio books, media ovelays and read aloud

Avneesh Singh: and we’ll leave this up to wendyreid to decide about inclusion in the audiobook spec

Charles LaPierre: nitpick for the 1.1 spec, we have a section that says “this version of epub without significant contributions from…”
… should we fill this out before FPWD?
… section C

Avneesh Singh: yep, Matt to fix
… next call there will be more critical discussion about pending issues
… thanks everyone!

4. Resolutions