RE: New fundamental test book and covers

> 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.

I would only add to this discussion that we're only talking about a
technique, and techniques are informative exactly because they typically
can't cover every need. As far as I could tell, Charles had captured some of
what you're pointing out with this statement:

> Only if the image on the cover serves a purpose, follow with a brief
description of the imagery.

What I like about this, though, is that it gets authors to think about the
text content on their covers, and that using placeholder alt text like
"cover image" is not sufficient. As Richard pointed out, there is often
marketing and other information that shouldn't be available to read only to
those who can see the image, no matter whether what your personal opinions
on the value of that information is. And as we move to Web Publication,
where users aren't going to be going through a bookshelf, a web page with a
single image that just reads "cover page" is not going to be helpful,
regardless of whether the title and author are provided on later pages.

It seems like a reasonable starting point that we can expand on for other
content forms than trade books, in other words.

Matt

-----Original Message-----
From: deborah.kaplan@suberic.net <deborah.kaplan@suberic.net> 
Sent: December 6, 2018 19:54
To: 'W3C EPUB 3 Community Group' <public-epub3@w3.org>
Subject: Re: New fundamental test book and covers

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 12:29:57 UTC