EPUB 3 Working Group A11y Telco — Minutes

Date: 2021-05-27

See also the Agenda and the IRC Log

Attendees

Present: Avneesh Singh, George Kerscher, Tzviya Siegman, Matthew Chan, Ben Schroeter, Wendy Reid, Gregorio Pellegrino, Charles LaPierre, Cristina Mussinelli

Regrets:

Guests:

Chair: Avneesh Singh

Scribe(s): Matthew Chan

Content:

1. Discussion on the explainer document for the European union representatives.

Avneesh Singh: gpellegrino, cristina, and luc created structure, and have been soliciting feedback from EU reps. Feedback was good.
… gpellegrino, cristina, and luc have been working on document according to feedback

Cristina Mussinelli: we can now share the explainer with you. Please give us your comments, but please do not change the already approved structure
… document should be neutral, will be positioned as the official opinion of EU publishers
… a mandate will be issued relating to the product portion, with a services portion to come later

Avneesh Singh: where can we find a link to the doc?

Gregorio Pellegrino: i will provide

George Kerscher: when you say that there will be a mandate for products, does this mean that they will develop a standard for RS accessibility?

Cristina Mussinelli: no, this would be for stand-alone devices
… e-reading devices

George Kerscher: so the kindles, the nooks, the daisy handheld reader

Cristina Mussinelli: and they must have the CA marking, a conformity logo for physical devices

Avneesh Singh: i wonder if this is a topic for us, or for organizations like Daisy, LIA, etc.

Cristina Mussinelli: I think its a topic for device manufacturers rather than us

Wendy Reid: its not spec related, but there are manufacturers of devices in the WG
… if you can share any documentations with the WG, please share

Cristina Mussinelli: there is no document right now
… also, it is also not clear to what the mandate will apply
… the mandate may also come in a draft form first, with revision later
… I will have to go back to EU reps to ask for clarity, the conversations so far were very high level, very broad

Gregorio Pellegrino: 1+

Tzviya Siegman: for other work I’ve done with EU directives, timelines have been very complicated
… you have to present a solution by a certain date, but commission may not respond for a long time

Cristina Mussinelli: timeline is not clear, but it does seem that this first mandate will not apply to ebooks, metadata, etc.

Gregorio Pellegrino: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ggr8KAMle2Ldi4V0uNsIjfSAFHSt6I48/view?usp=sharing

Cristina Mussinelli: also, after the mandate is done, there will be a comment/feedback period, so mandate will not be inforce right away

Gregorio Pellegrino: here is link to the explainer outline

George Kerscher: Daisy produced a document years ago for RS with a set of requirements that they could meet to be eligible to use the “Daisy OK” logo
… document old, and was all related to audio, but might that document be helpful now?

Gregorio Pellegrino: the Act has some requirements for RS. Some are generic, others are very focused on ebook a11y. e.g. Should allow change of font, size, color. Not as strict as for Daisy OK.

Avneesh Singh: if we want to get into that, I think we should have a separate call about EU requirements for RS

Cristina Mussinelli: they are not thinking about specific requirements, but about general standards. They don’t want to control specific RS functionality.
… only high level requirements related to the standards

Avneesh Singh: we should have a discussion on this in a smaller group
… okay, so now that we have a link to the document, our WG should review for content improvements, or mistakes. But we cannot affect structure.
… the document will not be a W3C publication. It will be authored by invited experts of EU publishers, etc.
… our WG will just be a contributor. If W3C authors document, it will no longer be considered a neutral document.
… so, what is our deadline for giving feedback?

Cristina Mussinelli: Within one week if possible

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

Avneesh Singh: The intention is to publish it as WG note at:

https://github.com/w3c/epub-specs/tree/main/reports/eu-a11y-mapping
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JrhCkrcjl3BQKAiSqfRK0URO5gZYHy8LGVZBo_SFW8w/edit#gid=0

Gregorio Pellegrino: intention was to do mapping between EUAA, our spec, and WCAG guidelines
… this was a spreadsheet, and then we moved towards formatting as a W3C note
… with help of mgarrish we tried to transform spreadsheet to HTML document
… but we found a way, and I am now ready to push the note
… pending some additional work that luc is doing on it

Cristina Mussinelli: it is important to publish it so that we have somewhere to refer to

Tzviya Siegman: there is a link in the document that says WCAG 2.1, but the link goes to WCAG 2.0

Gregorio Pellegrino: i started linking everything to WCAG 2.0 since that was what a11y 1.0 used, but with the latest revision I changed those links to point to the latest version of WCAG

Avneesh Singh: and in the mapping you refer to the a11y 1.1, so we should refer to latest version of WCAG

Gregorio Pellegrino: also, i think to the version of a11y 1.1 in the epub repo, but now should I change link to the latest published draft?

Matt Garrish: yes, when we publish rec there might be a prefix to the naming, but it should still work

3. Updated techniques for ARIA roles and EPUB:type

Avneesh Singh: Topic 3: Updated techniques for aria roles and EPUB:type. Proposal from Matt is at:

Avneesh Singh: https://github.com/w3c/epub-specs/pull/1682

Matt Garrish: this came up out of issues related to ACE and elsewhere
… ARIA roles and epub:type can’t always be used in the same places
… this PR revises the techniques to clarify that epub:type is for RS functionality, and ARIA roles are for a11y features
… we do not require them to always be used together (and they don’t address the same needs)
… also, there is a note at the top about situations where epub:type is still required (e.g. MO)

Gregorio Pellegrino: about ACE, do you think this will change how ACE will check epub:type and ARIA roles?

Matt Garrish: it continues to check ARIA roles, but it no longer says anything if you use an ARIA role without an epub:type, and vice versa

Avneesh Singh: yes, I can confirm this

Gregorio Pellegrino: i see an issue from an authoring point of view, since authoring tools only allow you to put in epub:type right now, and then people go in and add ARIA roles later. So ACE was useful to point out where this was necessary.

Matt Garrish: that’s a more complicated problem, because ACE doesn’t understand where ARIA role and epub:type need to go together, and where they don’t

4. AOB?

Avneesh Singh: okay, so thank you everyone
… there are two actions, 1) please review the EUAA explainer document, and 2) review the PR
… see you all in a couple of weeks