Re: agenda+ Fwd: Ruby accessibility gap in WCAG and upcoming proposal for WCAG 2.3

I stupidly thought that the meeting would be held tonight.  My apologies!

I will arrive in Kobe on Sunday.  If people would like to speak with me, I
will be available.

Regards,
Makoto



2025年11月5日(水) 8:08 Addison Phillips <addisoni18n@gmail.com>:

> Thank you, Makoto-san. Adding to our agenda.
>
>
> -------- Forwarded Message --------
> Subject: Ruby accessibility gap in WCAG and upcoming proposal for WCAG 2.3
> Resent-Date: Tue, 04 Nov 2025 23:06:30 +0000
> Resent-From: public-i18n-core@w3.org
> Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2025 07:15:43 +0900
> From: 村田真 <founder@info-a11y.jp> <founder@info-a11y.jp>
> To: Internationalization Working Group <public-i18n-core@w3.org>
> <public-i18n-core@w3.org>
>
> Dear I18N WG colleagues,
>
> In yesterday’s AG WG call, I realized something that I had not fully
> appreciated before: PDF documents are fully within scope for WCAG.  Given
> that, I want to raise an issue that is both technical and architectural,
> and is highly relevant to our group’s charter.
>
> As you know, Japanese, Chinese, and some other writing systems require
> ruby annotations to convey reading information that is essential for
> comprehension.
> However, WCAG currently includes no success criterion that ensures that
> the relationship between base text and ruby annotations is preserved.
>
> In HTML, this relationship is generally preserved through the ruby markup
> model.  But in PDF, ruby is often represented as a separate line of text,
> resulting in a complete loss of semantic association, making the document
> effectively unreadable for users relying on assistive technologies.
>
> Meanwhile, ISO 32000-2 (PDF 2.0) defines a correct ruby annotation
> structure, and PDF/UA includes guidance aligned with it.  I l learned from
> somebody in Adobe that their implementations fully support such
> correct structures..  So the missing piece is not technical capability, but
> rather the absence of a requirement in WCAG that would ensure this
> association must be preserved.
>
> I intend to propose a new success criterion in WCAG 2.3 requiring that
> content preserve the explicit parent–ruby relationship in a way that allows
> user agents and assistive technologies to:
>
>    - hide or show ruby,
>    - adjust visual presentation (size, spacing, color), and
>    - convey the association programmatically for TTS.
>
> Before drafting concrete wording, I plan to explain the rationale and show
> a short example in our call this Friday.
> After that, I will prepare a proposal text, and I would appreciate the
> Working Group’s feedback before submitting it to AG WG.
>
> I believe this can be a constructive and important contribution from I18N
> WG to WCAG 2.3, addressing a longstanding architectural gap.
>
> Best regards,
> Makoto
>