EPUB 3 Working Group A11y Telco — Minutes

Date: 2021-06-10

See also the Agenda and the IRC Log

Attendees

Present: Avneesh Singh, Wendy Reid, Matthew Chan, Charles LaPierre, Gregorio Pellegrino, Bill Kasdorf, Cristina Mussinelli, George Kerscher, Matt Garrish, Tzviya Siegman

Regrets:

Guests:

Chair: Avneesh Singh

Scribe(s): Matthew Chan

Content:

1. Explainer document for the european union representatives.

Avneesh Singh: https://www.fondazionelia.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/20210609_european_accessibility_act_report_on_the_state_of_the_art_of_publishing_standards.pdf

Avneesh Singh: cristina, gpellegrino, and luc updated this doc, and gpellegrino sent today
… feedback from community has been incorporated
… if the Explainer has to be updated based on our discussion of the table, gpellegrino can do this
… in the last section, we are explaining how standards are developed with openness, etc.
… is there a need to explain similar process for Schema metadata

Cristina Mussinelli: we decided to leave the table within the document even if the table exists elsewhere to make it more simple for commission
… if there are just minor changes to the document, we don’t need to update the commission, this can be quite static now
… and we refer to Schema as W3C managed, but we’re open to change in language if you want

Gregorio Pellegrino: can mgarrish help us with language to describe how Schema is managed?
… and we don’t explicitly say that those spec are from Schema

Avneesh Singh: we are discussing heading of Compliance with ICT TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS regulation (Annex II of 1025) in the document

Cristina Mussinelli: what is relevant from point of view of the commission is that the standard is managed, open (not copyrighted), and that there is a community around it
… and that there is no already existing European standard

Matt Garrish: it probably meets most of those, its managed on github, there are mailing lists for it
… but it is highly controlled. Not sure that you can just join Schema.org
… off the top of my head I don’t have language to describe that
… and even within W3C we can’t cite Schema.org
… not considered maintained by official standards organization

Cristina Mussinelli: similar to Editeur
… it might be okay for us to be vague on this, mgarrish please have a look and let us know what you think

Bill Kasdorf: i think the key point is that these things were developed collaboratively

Charles LaPierre: there are a handful of Schema.org properties we’ve introduced, and those are locked down, not changing
… its the vocabulary that goes into those properties that have changed
… in the CG we are trying to come up with a standardized way to introduce new values for these properties
… and we control that
… there’s a distinction there

Bill Kasdorf: yes, the properties are controlled by Schema, we specify the values

Avneesh Singh: well, yes, for the accessibility values, not all the values

Gregorio Pellegrino: to clarify, where EUAA refers to metadata, I mapped to package metadata

Matt Garrish: for a number of years we had these values on a wikipage, but there was no formal control procedure
… we may want to find a more formal process and place for these

Avneesh Singh: is there any working group for Schema.org in W3C?

Matt Garrish: there’s a CG

Avneesh Singh: I will discuss with with people who are writing W3C process
… back to main topic, do we have to explain how Schema.org meets the requirements of the Commission?

Gregorio Pellegrino: +1 to Matt :)

Bill Kasdorf: i’d trust mgarrish to make that call about the Explainer
… but it seems the most important thing is that the same metadata is used to describe website a11y and epub a11y

Cristina Mussinelli: i’m not sure the Commission will go into such detail. It is important for the document to be accurate, but I think what they really want is to be sure that the standards are already in line with EUAA, and what is already in practice
… but yes, please, mgarrish have a look and let us know
… and we can update the document in the future, but for the Commission I think what we have is enough

George Kerscher: agreed. What we’re proposing isn’t controlled by some single company, not a proprietary standard

Cristina Mussinelli: we’ve also prepared an article that we have published on LIA website, but if Inclusive Publishing wants to use it or a shortened version of it, we are okay
… it is a less technical summary of what is in the Explainer
… we can share link

2. Mapping of the requirements of European accessibility act to EPUB Accessibility specifications.

Avneesh Singh: avneeshsingh: If we are satisfied with it, then we should approve sending it to whole EPUB 3 WG for approving it as working group note.

Gregorio Pellegrino: https://w3c.github.io/epub-specs/reports/eu-a11y-mapping/

Avneesh Singh: can we approve in this group so that we can share with the bigger group?

Gregorio Pellegrino: we might add more detail to the media overlay section
… and maybe add some info about pagelists?
… pagelists are not a requirement of EUAA, but it is a feature that can help accessibility

Gregorio Pellegrino: https://w3c.github.io/epub-specs/reports/eu-a11y-mapping/#annex-I-section-IV-f-iii

Gregorio Pellegrino: we would add to this section

Avneesh Singh: and that section is about navigation, which relates to pagelist
… any objection to these two suggestions?
… okay, gpellegrino please make those changes

Avneesh Singh: (iv) Allowing alternative renditions of the content and its interoperability with a variety of assistive technologies, in such a way that it is perceivable, understandable, operable and robust

Avneesh Singh: this is a requirement of EUAA about renditions
… it has two parts: 1) allows rendition, and 2) interop with variety of AT

Gregorio Pellegrino: https://w3c.github.io/epub-specs/reports/eu-a11y-mapping/#annex-I-section-IV-f-iv

Avneesh Singh: a number of WCAG principles address the interop point, but not necessarily the allows rendition point

Gregorio Pellegrino: we have a problem with this statement in EUAA, because in epub world rendition has a specific meaning
… but in EUAA, rendition means only the ability to get the same content in different ways
… so I didn’t link directly to our rendition spec
… especially since other specs like for PDF, HTML, they also don’t have renditions in the way epub spec means

Avneesh Singh: well HTML can have a link to a more accessible version of the webpage

Charles LaPierre: I think we need to add more information to the headings of the mappings document, more than just the identifying section numbers

Gregorio Pellegrino: i had a lot of trouble making this document readable
… in each section I want to put the entirety of the EUAA text, but that text is too long to fit
… if you have any ideas, please let me know

Bill Kasdorf: the fundamental enabling technology for this is HTML because it is designed to be rendition independent
… and epub content is HTML
… makes braille readers possible, etc.

Wendy Reid: +1

Gregorio Pellegrino: +1 I can add a note

Tzviya Siegman: i think the problem here is that word “rendition”, and we can’t change EUAA, but maybe our document can disambiguate how that term means something different in epub spec

Bill Kasdorf: +1 to WCAG as a whole

Matt Garrish: the EUAA rendition requirement is basically requiring WCAG, right?
… I would refer to all of WCAG, instead of just particular pieces of it

Tzviya Siegman: +1 to mgarrish

Avneesh Singh: so what do we think about 1) referring to the 4 principles of WCAG, and 2) disambiguating the term rendition?

Gregorio Pellegrino: yes, agree. I can do that.

3. Review guidance on success criterion 1.3.2

See github issue #1695.

Avneesh Singh: Avneesh_: actual text is at:cvhttps://w3c.github.io/epub-specs/epub33/a11y-tech/#access-001

Matt Garrish: this is about meaningful sequence of content, and meaningful sequence of documents
… sequence of documents isn’t specifically an a11y issue, it’s a basic requirement for the epub to function
… going into spine ordering and all this other stuff in this part of the Techniques might be irrelevant here
… maybe we can just strip this stuff

Gregorio Pellegrino: does it also apply to the hierarchical order of the headings?

Matt Garrish: I don’t think that’s an issue for this section, that would fall under headings
… this is more about having the reading order matching the visual sequence of the epub

Avneesh Singh: so we keep statement that the logical reading order applies across the epub, but leave out the stuff about spine, etc.

Charles LaPierre: how would this affect choose your own adventure style books where you might not have a logical progression?

Matt Garrish: I think that’s again a separate issue
… in that example, there’s still a reading order, its just that you decide that order based on your ability to access the links

Tzviya Siegman: this just explicitly spells out what most publishers do anyway, so there should be no problem with removing the example about the spine

Proposed resolution: approve request in issue #1695 (Avneesh Singh)

Tzviya Siegman: +1

Gregorio Pellegrino: +1

Matthew Chan: +1

Bill Kasdorf: +1

Will Awad: +1

Cristina Mussinelli: +1

Wendy Reid: +!

Wendy Reid: +1

Resolution #1: approve request in issue #1695

4. AOB?

Tzviya Siegman: https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG22/#changelog

Tzviya Siegman: there’s a call for review of WCAG 2.2, they are requesting comment by tomorrow, but this isn’t the final round of revisions

Avneesh Singh: we’ll defer discussion of a11y note in the main group to next week’s meeting then, since we have to make revisions
… okay thank you everyone

5. Resolutions