RE: Fixed Format EPUB all seem to fail WCAG 2.1 SC 1.4.10

Hello Wayne,
 
We highly recommend that publishers use reflowable EPUB 3 to make content as
broadly accessible as possible. But EPUB uses HTML to represent its content,
so we also have to work with publishers to get them to follow WCAG
guidelines. We don't restrict content at the core specification level. The
EPUB Accessibility specification is where we inform publishers on how to
apply WCAG and what we use to evaluate publications for conformance.
 
Any publisher who distributes EPUB 3 as a fixed format should put in the
accessibilitySummary that this is in fixed layout and is not accessible. We
agree with you that fixed layouts are not generally accessible. Screen
enlargement is not the only problem with them.
 
Where are you getting these fixed layout EPUBs from, out of curiosity?
 
Best
George
 
 
 
From: Wayne Dick <Wayne.Dick@csulb.edu> 
Sent: Thursday, July 11, 2019 2:26 PM
To: public-epub3@w3.org
Cc: George Kerscher <kerscher@montana.com>
Subject: Fixed Format EPUB all seem to fail WCAG 2.1 SC 1.4.10
 
Dear Community Group,
While I was looking at the EPUB Content Document 3.2 from the W3C Community
Group I could not help but notice that there is no case to cover 320 CSS
Pixels in width. Support for this case is now required (normative) by WCAG
2.1 in recognition of the fact that horizontal scrolling does not support
effective reading. 
 
For an easy visualization of this issue you may look at,
<https://nosetothepage.org/Fitz/2dScroll.html>
https://nosetothepage.org/Fitz/2dScroll.html. This presentation is good for
sighted readers because our best examples are visual. If a blind user would
like to experience the issue imagine a braille document where each line of
text was laid out across two pages, a left and right page. To read a line of
text, you would start on the left page and then move to the right page; find
the remainder of the line to read on the right page; finish reading the line
on the right page and then find the next line on the left page. This is how
people with low vision have been expected to read forever. To read a 100
page book requires 10,000 such transitions from page to page, at a minimum.
Note: When I say minimum I mean the minimum number of scrolls needed for the
user to have an opportunity to see each letter once.  In recognition of this
difficulty the W3C developed the Reflow success criterion (SC 1.4.10). This
severe problem for people with partial sight was trivialize by the Blind and
Visual Impairment support community for many years, and it probably cost
many young people the opportunity to attend and / or complete college.



I personally worked my way through a graduate program in mathematics using
technologies that required horizontal scrolling. The only thing that got me
through was my deep love of the subject. At that time we could not even get
recorded books for the blind, since the Chafee amendment had not passed.



In my 30 years as a Professor of computer science I taught around 2400 CS
majors. In that time 2 students with partial sight graduated from our
program. Give 3,000,000 people with partial sight in the US that is a
profoundly low level of under representation. Fixed Format explains a lot of
that.



Sincerely, Wayne