EPUB 3 Working Group A11y Telco — Minutes

Date: 2021-03-11

See also the Agenda and the IRC Log

Attendees

Present: Avneesh Singh, Juliette McShane, Teenya Franklin, Gregorio Pellegrino, Matt Garrish, Tzviya Siegman, Ben Schroeter, Cristina Mussinelli, Charles LaPierre, Bill Kasdorf, Laurent Le Meur

Regrets: George Kerscher

Guests:

Chair: Avneesh Singh

Scribe(s): Cristina Mussinelli, Gregorio Pellegrino

Content:

Avneesh Singh: https://w3c.github.io/epub-specs/epub33/a11y/index.html

Matt Garrish: I have done a restructuring on the document
… restructure the different section to make the different section clearer
… it may be useful if people can look at the revised document and verify it there is space for improvements

1. distribution

See github issue #1487.

Avneesh Singh: https://w3c.github.io/epub-specs/epub33/a11y/index.html#sec-distribution

Avneesh Singh: there are some questions on the distribution section
… this section was added to be in line with the European Accessibility Act highlighting that it is not a normative section

Gregorio Pellegrino: we can do as in WCAG as a note where is highlighted that is not normative and it may be only for some legislation in some countries

Matt Garrish: worry as DRM is always an problematic issue in specs
… this is one reason to avoid including it

Bill Kasdorf: the ways it actually stated that authors must not impose restrictions while restrictions are implemented by distributors

Matt Garrish: there are features of DRM that authors or publishers can add and it is important do highlight this issue

Tzviya Siegman: as it it a requirement of EEA Gregorio may you clarify what is required by the EEA

Proposed resolution: make distribution section non-normative and place a note that it is required by EU accessibility act (Avneesh Singh)

Charles LaPierre: +1

Gregorio Pellegrino: +1

Tzviya Siegman: +1

Laurent Le Meur: +1

Ben Schroeter: 0

Matt Garrish: +1

Bill Kasdorf: 0

Resolution #1: make distribution section non-normative and place a note that it is required by EU accessibility act

2. Update on EAA

Cristina Mussinelli: Me and Luc Audrain had a meeting with all the responsible member states
… for implementing the EAA
… we told them the status of the art of EPUB and Accessibility
… they asked us a document, we are producing it telling that standards are already available
… that guidelines for accessibility are there, ecc.
… also writing the consensus process we have for approving the specs
… this should be a good option to prevent the creation of a new standard
… (harmonized standard from the EU)

Tzviya Siegman: do you have input about publishers that are not using EPUB? (e.g. scholar publishers)

Cristina Mussinelli: there may be problems with PDFs

Tzviya Siegman: Yes, I think there may be problems with a11y metadata in PDFs
… I had a meeting with STM (other publishers) and I would love to have a common solution for accessibility metadata in PDFs

Cristina Mussinelli: for sure we can work on the document

Avneesh Singh: We will present EPUB Accessibility Guidelines + Schema.org + ONIX
… to the EU commission

Cristina Mussinelli: we would like to create this document in about one month

3. Media Overlays section is updated

See github issue #1458.

Avneesh Singh: The requirement of logical reading order is removed from main EPUB 3.3 Media Overlays specs, and placed in EPUB Accessibility.

Avneesh Singh: https://w3c.github.io/epub-specs/epub33/a11y/index.html#sec-mo

Matt Garrish: the issue is: does the specs have to be so strict on the reading order for MO?
… there are situations where you can have multiple ways to read the same content
… the solution is to remove the requirement of following the reading order
… from the main specs

Avneesh Singh: maybe we can add the requirement from MO to follow the reading order in the EPUB accessibility guidelines

Matt Garrish: I think that in different cases you can have multiple ways to read the content

Avneesh Singh: my question came from WCAG where following the reading order is a requirement
… since MO is an alternative for the screenreader, maybe we have to think about this requirement

Matt Garrish: yes, I understand

Bill Kasdorf: my question is about skippability in publications that don’t have a particular reading order, like reference and legal publications
… if I look for a particular paragraph I want to get there

4. pages related issues

See github issue #1503, #1502, #1501, #1500, #1542.

Matt Garrish:: Updated EPUB accessibility for addressing a part of the following static pages issues. Some requirements can be addressed by EPUB Accessibility while others should go to best practices.

Avneesh Singh: https://w3c.github.io/epub-specs/epub33/a11y/index.html#sec-page-nav

Matt Garrish: we had different questions about pagelists
… one propose is to structure the requirements for pagelists
… e.g. level A: some pages in the pagelist
… level AA: all content pages linked in pagelist
… level AAA: all pages (no exclusion, even blank pages)
… I didn’t move over with my requirements

Avneesh Singh: I don’t think these issues can be added in the guidelines, maybe the best place is best practices

Tzviya Siegman: we had similar in PDFs with “this page intentionally left blank”, where we left blank pages for starting the chapters on page right
… I think that marking blank pages can be really confusing
… maybe we can use ARIA

Avneesh Singh: yes, but then someone will say that ARIA is not only for AT

Charles LaPierre: I’m not sure if Read Aloud by the Reading system can get that information

Matt Garrish: for sure we can investigate the use of ARIA label or something similar

Avneesh Singh: I think this task force should focus on the requirements Matt put in the issues
… we can go through the issue tracker
… and discuss there

Matt Garrish: we have a issue about the ordering of the pagelist
… if I have the pages moved in the digital version, what happen to the pagelist?

Tzviya Siegman: I have several examples of this

Avneesh Singh: I think for AT users it would be useful to have an alert

Charles LaPierre: maybe we can put in in the accessibility summary (metadata), but do we need to have some requirements for reading systems?

Gregorio Pellegrino: maybe something like play order attribute in NCX tocs

5. Resolutions