FXL Accessibility (was Re: [Minutes] EPUB WG, 2nd vF2F day minutes 2021-10-29)

As always, great meetings and discussions!

When it comes to accessibility of FXL, I have to say that I continue to be confused as to why folks don’t look towards a place where many of the problems that are discussed here have been addressed – PDF.   You have a format that was designed to be a fixed layout but yet can be made accessible in compliance with the same WCAG standards as the web (not to mention its own PDF/UA standard).   However, I will note that one of the key differences between PDF and FXL is *not* about the file format – but instead about the way that processors (user agents) communicate with the Assistive Technology (AT).   In PDFs case, the two were designed in concert to work on fixed layout documents where in the FXL world, the content is “communized” down to standard web technologies and then presented to the AT – so that there may/will be things that are “lost in translation”.

On the topic of alternate representations – specifically those that are prepared in advance – my recommendation is *DON’T*.  In addition to all the issues raised in the meeting, let me also add one that most of you don’t think about…user additions to content!  Think annotations & bookmarks!  They need to work on both the FXL and reflowable versions of the content, in reasonable and understandable ways.  Today Web Annots are targeted to a specific HTML document, which means that w/o some work (and going beyond the spec), they wouldn’t show on the alternate.  Even if it did work, would it be as meaningful if the content isn’t in the “same place”?   It’s a problem for both the annotation creator as well as the annotation presentation system.

One way that we have solved many of these problems with PDF is by standardizing a model for deriving HTML from PDF (https://www.pdfa.org/resource/deriving-html-from-pdf/) – which means that those fixed layouts can be reliably (and consistently) presented using web technology in a reflowable manner.  This allows for a single source of truth (i.e., avoids the duplicative data problem) that can be presented fixed or reflowable.  It also has some thoughts on handling annotations.   Since Tagged PDF shared *a lot* with the HTML elements – it would be possible to apply the same algorithm to an FXL document to produce a reflowable version – and it can be doing entirely client-side on the active DOM (if you really wanted to get tricky).

Just some food for thought….

Leonard

From: Ivan Herman <ivan@w3.org>
Date: Saturday, October 30, 2021 at 3:42 AM
To: W3C EPUB 3 Working Group <public-epub-wg@w3.org>
Subject: [Minutes] EPUB WG, 2nd vF2F day minutes 2021-10-29
Minutes are here:

https://www.w3.org/publishing/groups/epub-wg/Meetings/Minutes/2021-10-29-epub<https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2Fpublishing%2Fgroups%2Fepub-wg%2FMeetings%2FMinutes%2F2021-10-29-epub&data=04%7C01%7Clrosenth%40adobe.com%7C29f5beca4a2b47c5f5b108d99b78cf20%7Cfa7b1b5a7b34438794aed2c178decee1%7C0%7C0%7C637711765444919480%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=LJq9GpkNp%2F1E5aONP7eiNMY1fknBjCeF0MZUOOS7CCM%3D&reserved=0>

Ivan

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Ivan Herman, W3C
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