Re: [External] Re: New fundamental test book and covers

I don't see a way to move beyond #3 (the status quo).  

#2 - The complexities of making something optional on a title by title basis, determining who is making it optional (publisher? Distributor? Author? Reader?  Can a teacher make it optional for a textbook, but only for specific classes? And on, and on...), and then inserting it into the reading order (is it maintained in the same place for every book on subsequent launches?  Can it be placed in arbitrary places?  Who determines this?), while requiring a reading system to solve this in order to be conformant, is too onerous.

#1 - The complexities of reverse engineering every AT and how to insert non-standard alt markup for it to be treated like standard alt markup, and requiring reading systems to do this (and maintain it as new AT emerge, and existing ones update) in order to be conformant, is too onerous.

We are left with #3.

-Rick
 

On 12/6/18, 4:54 PM, "deborah.kaplan@suberic.net" <deborah.kaplan@suberic.net> wrote:

    I feel like metadata is a red herring here, because while it's one of the use cases, the examples I gave (comics and picture books) are of cases where the art should be described, as meaningful images. This means there is a clear use case for cover alt being available to a book reader, regardless of options for encoding metadata. This means there are three plausible solutions:
    
    1. Require reading systems to report any cover alt to AT, in some way, perhaps with visually hidden text marked as doc-cover.
    
    2. Require reading systems to make the cover available to all readers, as well as AT, as an optional page that can be read in the reading order.
    
    3. Tell content creators that if content from the cover is meaningful to the reading experience, they need to including it as a page in the reading order. (This is more or less what we do now.)
    
    Three is the status quo and results in an inconsistent and confusing state of affairs.  Two is what I've always wished we do, but I have heard plenty of others in publishing who dislike having the cover in the reading order.  We ideally should do one or two.
    
    Deborah

Received on Friday, 7 December 2018 03:33:53 UTC