EPUB 3 Working Group Telco — Minutes

Date: 2022-02-17

See also the Agenda and the IRC Log

Attendees

Present: Dave Cramer, Murata Makoto, Toshiaki Koike, Masakazu Kitahara, Wendy Reid, Matthew Chan, Brady Duga, Shinya Takami (高見真也), Wendy Reid

Regrets: Ben Schroeter

Guests:

Chair: Dave Cramer

Scribe(s): Matthew Chan

Content:

1. TPAC 2022 Attendance.

Wendy Reid: W3C exploring idea of holding TPAC in person this year in Vancouver, BC, Canada.
… they’ve asked all chairs to gauge interest with their wgs.
… probably impossible to know at this point if people will go, it would be in September.
… some employers are not allowing corporate travel right now.
… not sure what situation will be like by September.

Dave Cramer: I hear rumors that they are dropping testing requirements for vaccinated people soon.
… if at all possible I would go to in person TPAC.
… given safety, etc..

Wendy Reid: so if everything makes this possible, what is the interest in holding in person TPAC meeting?.
… it would be a hybrid meeting, by the way.
… i.e. same as during the before times.
… with simultaneous in person and online participants.

Brady Duga: assuming all the above, my interest is high.

Shinya Takami (高見真也): not sure about the situation at my company, but I will discuss with our JP members in Japanese.
… [in Japanese].
… toshiakikoike says that it would be difficult for him due to health and the covid policy at his company.
… MasakazuKitahara says it would also be difficult for him, given the current situation.

Murata Makoto: i’m thinking of going to Italy this year for DAISY conference, I am not prohibited from going. But what will be the topic of the meeting there?.

Wendy Reid: still TBD.

Brady Duga: TPAC is happening either way, we’re just deciding whether there will be an in person component.

Murata Makoto: in my experience hybrid conferences don’t work as well, do you agree?.

Wendy Reid: it’s definitely harder, but we’ve done it for 2 years before covid.
… we may change the time, i.e. have shorter sessions.
… maybe 2 mornings, or 2 afternoons, depending on what works for everyone.
… and a Pacific time zone makes it hard to coordinate meeting times with EU.
… but we will do our best for everything, and timezones are being considered.
… they may just be deciding whether they want to keep their reservation at the conference facility.

Dave Cramer: do you have what you need to report back?.

Wendy Reid: yes, I think so!.

2. page progression direction in FXL content documents (issue epub-specs#1483)

See github issue epub-specs#1483.

Dave Cramer: I was a little puzzled by language in the spec around this.
… there may be a clash of terminology, i.e. page-progression-direction attribute from the package doc, CSS’s own documentation about page progression, etc..

Brady Duga: I think there was some proposed text at the end of the discussion.

Wendy Reid: “if page progression direction has value other than default, RS must ignore page progression computed from the content”.

Dave Cramer: if you don’t put page progression direction in package, but you obviously have rtl content then it seems strange to say that the RS can’t figure that out.
… so I would support the proposed text.

Murata Makoto: sounds reasonable to me.

Proposed resolution: Adopt Brady’s suggested text in issue 1483, close issue 1483. (Wendy Reid)

Dave Cramer: +1.

Wendy Reid: +1.

Shinya Takami (高見真也): +1.

Brady Duga: +1.

Toshiaki Koike: +1.

Matthew Chan: +1.

Masakazu Kitahara: +1.

Resolution #1: Adopt Brady’s suggested text in issue 1483, close issue 1483.

3. FXL Limitations.

See github issue epub-specs#1733.

See github issue epub-specs#1736.

Wendy Reid: not a lot of discussion on these, but they are still open, so we want to mention.
… gpellegrino did review of a11y documentation last year.
… he raised 2 issues specifically about FXL a11y.
… one is about there being limitations on FXL a11y right now, not able to make fully accessible FXL document right now.
… other one is about accessibility and orientation, there will be a note in best practices that blocking orientation can impede readability.
… if no comments, both gpellgrino’s comments will be reflected in note.

Dave Cramer: my understanding is that the problem which cannot be avoided in making FXL accessible content is that font size is fixed.
… is there accessibility metadata around there?.

Wendy Reid: i think so, but I can’t recall specific accessibility hazard text at the moment.
… but yes, inability to modify text size, font face.
… we will be mapping some of the statements in the best practice note to WCAG - one of these is about scrolling, i.e. having to scroll both horizontally and vertically to read content if zoomed in.

Dave Cramer: i could definitely make an FXL that doesn’t specify fonts, but not sure if RS would allow user to choose a font.

Brady Duga: no, the whole point of FXL is that you’re not supposed to change that.

Dave Cramer: does the CSS positioning spec say that you can use these things to make inaccessible documents?.

Wendy Reid: there is an accessibility feature call display transformability, but not corresponding accessibility hazard for no display transformability.
… but I will ask authors of a11y spec.

Dave Cramer: historically epub has allowed a lot of different ways to achieve a particular goal, and we’ve never taken the position that every epub must be accessible to every user.
… for example, standard alone audio books are very useful for accessibility, but also useless to a specific segment of people.
… this seems like we’re taking a step towards saying FXL is an invalid way of presenting content to users.

Wendy Reid: this is all non-normative, but i’m phrasing the note as “the limits of FXL a11y”.
… it is possible to do a lot of a11y work for a lot of people, but there are limitations that make it so that some segments will not be served.

Shinya Takami (高見真也): right now we do not have requirement to make epub accessible, so it will be hard to realize accessible epubs i think.

Wendy Reid: isn’t a version of epub a11y 1.1 adopted as JIS standard?.

Murata Makoto: it will be later this year, in aug/sep.

Dave Cramer: okay, what wendyreid has proposed sounds good to me.

4. Wording of Affordance.

See github issue epub-specs#1961.

Wendy Reid: i think the only question is, Makoto, is it okay to go with the last suggested text from mgarrish on the issue?.

Murata Makoto: different people have different understanding of the word affordance, so let’s use something else.

Wendy Reid: I think mgarrish suggested some form of “alternatives”.

Murata Makoto: George suggested “available features”.

Wendy Reid: mgarrish suggested that in the specific text we’re talking about “alternatives” might work.

An EPUB Publication can have more than one set of sufficient access modes depending on the alternatives provided to enable reading in another mode..

Dave Cramer: I like that wording.

Murata Makoto: there are two instances of the word “affordance”. Will we fix both?.

Wendy Reid: the other is in the explanation for accessModeSufficient.

Wendy Reid: “this property takes into account any affordances for content that is not broadly accessible”.

Wendy Reid: so yes, I think using “alternatives” here makes sense too.

Murata Makoto: thank you!.

5. AOB.

Wendy Reid: I think that was it.
… we’re working our way through the issue list.
… we have some testing issues, security and privacy, MO.
… for security and privacy I’ve reached out to our 2 reviewers for feedback.

Dave Cramer: looks like we could be in CR soon.
… okay, thank you everyone.

6. Resolutions