IRC log of epub-fxl on 2023-05-30

Timestamps are in UTC.

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logging to https://www.w3.org/2023/05/30-epub-fxl-irc
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RRSAgent, make logs Public
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please title this meeting ("meeting: ..."), wendyreid
13:01:40 [wendyreid]
meeting: FXL Accessibility Task Force Meeting 30 May 2023
13:01:43 [wendyreid]
date: 2023-05-30
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chair: wendyreid
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present+
13:03:44 [wendyreid]
present+
13:03:45 [jeffrey_griggs]
present+
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scribe+
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present+
13:05:46 [gautier]
present+
13:07:37 [gpellegrino]
wendyreid: this is our first meeting in the Publishing CG
13:07:57 [gpellegrino]
... we moved here from the WG, since this work is more on incubation
13:08:41 [gpellegrino]
... there'll be a new WG for maintenance of EPUB3
13:09:05 [gpellegrino]
duga: I'm Brady I work in Google, I'm in EPUB space since many years
13:09:16 [gpellegrino]
gautier: I'm Gautier I work for EDRLab
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present+
13:09:36 [gpellegrino]
JonasLillqvist: I'm Jonas, I work at CELIA, the DAISY library in Finland
13:09:56 [gpellegrino]
shadi: I'm Shadi from Amazon, I was a W3C staff
13:10:17 [gpellegrino]
jeffrey_griggs: I'm Jeffrey from Penguin Random House
13:11:00 [gpellegrino]
Miia: I'm Miia from Celia
13:11:33 [gpellegrino]
wendyreid: I'm Wendy from Rakuten Kobo, I've been the chair of the EPUB 3 WG, now I chair this group
13:11:53 [gpellegrino]
wendyreid: First question: what do we want to focus on?
13:12:27 [gpellegrino]
... we started with guidelines and ideas for making fixed layout more accessible
13:13:10 [gpellegrino]
... one is the idea to being able to switch from FXL content to the same content in reflowable
13:13:29 [wendyreid]
https://w3c.github.io/publishingcg/TaskForces/fxl-a11y/index.html
13:14:31 [wendyreid]
https://w3c.github.io/epub-specs/epub33/fxl-a11y/
13:14:42 [gpellegrino]
q+
13:14:46 [wendyreid]
ack gpellegrino
13:14:49 [wendyreid]
scribe+
13:15:33 [wendyreid]
gpellegrino: From experience as LIA, in the last month we assessed an accessible FXL book, we sent to some blind testers, and they asked why?
13:15:44 [wendyreid]
... experience for them was no different than any other book
13:15:50 [wendyreid]
... maybe we're not so far away
13:16:02 [wendyreid]
... we do need to explore some ways for low vision users to get the content
13:16:11 [wendyreid]
... fxl content for low-vision users is tricky
13:16:25 [wendyreid]
... maybe that work is not on the side of content creators, but on the side of reading solutions
13:16:28 [gautier]
q+
13:17:03 [wendyreid]
gpellegrino: Another related thing, in WCAG as far as I know, it is required to be able to zoom fxl content by 200% or 400% which is the way PDFs can be compliant
13:17:13 [wendyreid]
... since we know PDF reflow is limited
13:17:44 [wendyreid]
... we know most reading solutions limit zoom for FXL, especially on desktop
13:17:57 [wendyreid]
... maybe having some guidelines or suggestions for RS developers may be useful
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q+
13:18:04 [wendyreid]
ack gautier
13:18:07 [gpellegrino]
scribe+
13:18:29 [gpellegrino]
gautier: from the RS development side, we've seen different projects in the past months
13:18:40 [gpellegrino]
... and been asked different implementations
13:19:03 [gpellegrino]
... we can't develop an implementation for every proof of concept
13:19:45 [gpellegrino]
... I think that before developing, we need to get a common way to resolve the issue
13:20:27 [gpellegrino]
... so to be sure that our effort it useful
13:21:13 [gpellegrino]
... for sure having the zoom is fine, but it is the minim level
13:21:39 [wendyreid]
ack wendyreid
13:22:07 [gpellegrino]
... the problems we see in the EPUBs is that they're mainly created by InDesign
13:22:30 [gpellegrino]
wendyreid: for sure there is room for guidelines for reading systems
13:22:45 [gpellegrino]
... zoom is important, but is not sufficient
13:23:33 [gpellegrino]
... think about mobile readers
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... but also think about FXLs made only of images
13:24:02 [gpellegrino]
... there we cannot extract the text
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q+
13:24:31 [wendyreid]
ack gpellegrino
13:25:06 [wendyreid]
gpellegrino: My first idea was something like the guide from the PDF association for getting HTML out of PDFs, a standardized approach
13:25:23 [wendyreid]
... that enables every content creator to create a PDF that can be made reflowable
13:25:41 [wendyreid]
... I think this might be one approach
13:25:48 [wendyreid]
... accessibility means quality
13:26:09 [wendyreid]
... a subset of building FXL content, don't focus necessarily on tools
13:26:19 [wendyreid]
... what do we need from HTML to have better reading experiences
13:26:26 [Naomi]
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13:26:28 [wendyreid]
... I know many FXL titles are image-only
13:26:33 [Naomi]
present+
13:26:36 [wendyreid]
... those FXL aren't accessible at all
13:26:49 [wendyreid]
... it can be done, but in this TF we can try to raise the bar
13:27:02 [wendyreid]
... if you want to make a FXL out of images, fine, but if you want it to be accessible, do this
13:27:34 [gpellegrino]
https://pdfa.org/resource/deriving-html-from-pdf/
13:27:50 [gpellegrino]
scribe+
13:28:34 [gpellegrino]
wendyreid: we can give to the users all the information, but then is on their side to decide to do something or not
13:28:46 [gpellegrino]
... like making a content accessible or not
13:30:03 [Naomi]
q+
13:30:09 [gpellegrino]
wendyreid: so for the moment we have: guidelines accessible FXL reading systems, guidelines for content creators to enable them to make great FXL books that can be manipulated by reading solutions (making them reflowable)
13:30:10 [wendyreid]
ack Naomi
13:30:19 [gpellegrino]
... like PDF association
13:30:54 [gpellegrino]
Naomi: something very useful may be a mapping between a11y metadata and code examples
13:31:04 [gpellegrino]
... so we can start from something
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q+
13:31:12 [wendyreid]
ack gpellegrino
13:31:41 [wendyreid]
gpellegrino: I think most of us here knows Lars from Colibrio, Lars thinks that SVG can be a game changer for making accessible FXL with complex layouts, using ARIA and SVG
13:31:48 [wendyreid]
... I haven't tested it yet
13:31:59 [Naomi]
q+
13:32:12 [wendyreid]
... not sure if it's supported by assistive technologies, but a better way to export a book from authoring tools
13:32:21 [wendyreid]
... pixel perfect without losing semantivs
13:32:24 [duga]
q+
13:32:32 [wendyreid]
... maybe a research project to check that
13:32:41 [wendyreid]
... we focused mainly on HTML/image formats
13:32:48 [wendyreid]
... but SCG is also supported by the standards
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s/SCG/SVG/
13:32:58 [wendyreid]
ack Naomi
13:33:00 [gpellegrino]
scribe+
13:33:18 [gpellegrino]
Naomi: we've never done SVG in spine
13:33:35 [gpellegrino]
... but we did embed SVGs in HTML
13:33:43 [gpellegrino]
... but not all reading systems support it
13:33:53 [gpellegrino]
... so this may block content creators
13:34:08 [gpellegrino]
... I think it'll need more research
13:34:13 [wendyreid]
ack duga
13:34:33 [gpellegrino]
duga: we implemented this at the begin of the pandemic
13:34:52 [gpellegrino]
... we used SVG and used ARIA plus Media Overlays
13:35:01 [gpellegrino]
... it was pixel perfect
13:35:25 [gpellegrino]
... even if text is a drawing, you can group it and make it acts like text
13:35:37 [gpellegrino]
... the Media Overlay works perfectly
13:36:00 [gpellegrino]
... we didn't continue with this project
13:36:22 [gpellegrino]
... we has issue in grouping words and lines
13:37:55 [gpellegrino]
wendyreid: one question is: what is the time on production side?
13:38:11 [gpellegrino]
Naomi: I have code that converts text on a path in InDesign in SVG
13:38:12 [gpellegrino]
q+
13:38:31 [gpellegrino]
... it was not simple, but can be done
13:39:06 [gpellegrino]
... I think InDesign is not that interested in exporting SVGs
13:39:26 [wendyreid]
ack gpellegrino
13:39:27 [gpellegrino]
duga: we used Google slides as sources, where you can export SVGs
13:39:42 [wendyreid]
gpellegrino: I think you can get quality SVG out of PDFs
13:40:00 [wendyreid]
... it's a strange workflow, but if you get a good PDF, you can then convert to SVG, then add ARIA
13:40:08 [gpellegrino]
scribe+
13:40:48 [gpellegrino]
wendyreid: it worths doing research on this
13:41:27 [gpellegrino]
... from EPUB tests we know that SVG is well supported by different reading systems
13:41:44 [gpellegrino]
Naomi: we had problems with text on a path
13:42:17 [gpellegrino]
... SVG in general may work, but specific features may not
13:43:20 [gpellegrino]
wendyreid: region base navigation is a thing
13:43:31 [gpellegrino]
... it's not well supported right now
13:44:10 [gpellegrino]
... I think it is important to investigate the needs of users
13:44:28 [gpellegrino]
... link cognitive disabilities users, they may benefit for narrated books
13:44:42 [gpellegrino]
q+
13:44:46 [wendyreid]
ack gpellegrino
13:45:10 [wendyreid]
gpellegrino: Two things, on the issue side, I could open an issue for SVG investigation just ot have something to follow.
13:45:13 [gautier]
q+
13:45:32 [wendyreid]
.. there is a lot of hype right now around accessible FXL, at the same time there is some misinformation out there
13:45:42 [wendyreid]
... if accessible FXL is a new specification
13:46:04 [wendyreid]
... in my opinion, accessible FXL is just a FXL EPUB3 following WCAG
13:46:12 [wendyreid]
... there are different interpretations
13:46:22 [wendyreid]
... media overlays but without semantics
13:46:26 [wendyreid]
ack gautier
13:46:29 [gpellegrino]
scribe+
13:47:03 [gpellegrino]
gautier: I think the document linked by Wendy is a reference point as state of the art
13:47:42 [gpellegrino]
... maybe from there we can link to different solutions from there
13:48:11 [gpellegrino]
... so that then we can have a short list of the proposals
13:48:41 [gpellegrino]
... because it is difficult for reading systems developers to implement them all
13:50:05 [gpellegrino]
wendyreid: Ok, we can open different issues
13:50:31 [gpellegrino]
... and then I can add a paragraph on the note, telling what is an accessible FXL
13:50:38 [gpellegrino]
... I'll make a PR on that
13:50:58 [gpellegrino]
... if you have new ideas on this, please open an issue in the CG repository
13:51:34 [gpellegrino]
... we have different task forces in the CG
13:51:41 [wendyreid]
https://github.com/w3c/publishingcg/issues
13:52:50 [gpellegrino]
... se you all in 4 weeks
13:53:11 [wendyreid]
zakim, end meeting
13:53:11 [Zakim]
As of this point the attendees have been gpellegrino, wendyreid, jeffrey_griggs, duga, gautier, shadi, Naomi
13:53:13 [Zakim]
RRSAgent, please draft minutes
13:53:14 [RRSAgent]
I have made the request to generate https://www.w3.org/2023/05/30-epub-fxl-minutes.html Zakim
13:53:21 [Zakim]
I am happy to have been of service, wendyreid; please remember to excuse RRSAgent. Goodbye
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13:53:31 [wendyreid]
present+ JonasLillqvist, Miia
13:53:42 [wendyreid]
rrsagent, please draft minutes
13:53:43 [RRSAgent]
I have made the request to generate https://www.w3.org/2023/05/30-epub-fxl-minutes.html wendyreid
13:54:09 [wendyreid]
rrsagent, bye
13:54:09 [RRSAgent]
I see no action items