RE: Pronunciation deliverables during (APA re-charter)

Hi all,

After a good chat with Irfan, Paul, and Alan, here is our proposal for the
charter. Irfan or Paul may have tweaks for this before the APA call on
Wednesday. We have 4 different types of deliverables. Please find them
below, with a covering section explaining our philosophy on the TF's
approach.


// 0. Overall philosophy

In previous years, the TF has proposed wholesale solutions to the various
use cases we found - e.g. inclusion of SSML, or some significant subset of
it, into HTML. This has proved infeasible due to the large amount of work,
and co-ordination between organisations required.

We are therefore proposing to focus on creating a minimal set of proposals
to address key use cases, and leverage existing implemented web standards as
much as possible. We foreseee possible small normative specifications,
and/or extensions to existing normative specifications, as well as best
practice documents that will detail how authors can solve some issues with
existing technology.

We are still updating and exploring the latest contemporary use cases, and
documenting these will be another key deliverable.


// 1. Significant updates to requirements docs (non-normative)

We will deliver significant updates to our requirements documents:

Use Cases; and
(Technical) Gap Analysis

Timeframe: Q3 2025.


// 2. Tentative normative documents

Based on the use cases that appear to have the most feasible solutions, we
will explore the creation of normative documents to support them. One such
example might be a CSS Speech 'module' that deals specifically with breaking
(or pausing) in speech. This could fill in a key gap, in the correct layer,
that could be used to address some use cases.

Another option (though, given our current understanding of the use cases, we
feel this is less likely) would be to create a new normative subset of a
language such as PLS (or SSML) using RDF or similar technology. The purpose
of this would be to bring in the semantics we need, but not be reliant on
XML, as incorporating additional XML-based technologies into HTML has been
proven infeasible.

Expected completion: Q2 2027


// 3. Tentative extensions to existing normative specifications

We may also submit additions to existing Accessibility API Mapping (AAM)
documents, e.g. to expose more information to assistive technologies from
the UA.

Expected completion: Q3 2026

One option we considered here, but find unlikely to be a successful avenue
for exploration, is proposing changes to the published CSS Speech standard.
As it currently lacks implementation, we prefer a ground-up approach that
focuses on the parts (e.g. break/pause) that may gain traction with
implementers.


// 4. Best practice documentation (non-normative)

We expect that we may find some of the key use cases could be wholly, or
partly, implementable via existing implemented standards. In these cases, we
could publish a Note about how the use cases can be solved.

Expected completion: Q2 2027


Best regards,


Matthew

Matthew Atkinson
Head of Web Standards
Samsung R&D Institute UK
Samsung Electronics
+44 7733 238 020

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Received on Monday, 28 April 2025 16:43:59 UTC