Re: Wendy and Marisa on audiobooks

Indeed participation has been the issue.
When sync media CG was created, Hiroshi Kawamura informed me that ITU is interested in such a specification, and he connected me to the people in ITU.
I invited them to participate in the work, there were words of interest but we could not see much coming in.
Marisa connected to various groups in W3C, some key people from them joined, but silently.
We hear interest in this work whenever we attended APA meetings, but no serious traction.
It was DAISY driven effort in beginning and remained DAISY driven effort up till now.
When EPUB 3 Media Overlay was developed a decade ago, the concept gained good support. But Media Overlays was adopted by very few main stream publishers.
Overall, I have seen that the concept is attractive, but it does not gain traction practically. This is why we think that it is better to take breath for some time and see if people have compelling reasons for driving it forward.

With regards
Avneesh

From: Marisa DeMeglio 
Sent: Sunday, May 10, 2020 3:51
To: Siegman, Tzviya 
Cc: Ivan Herman ; W3C Publishing Steering Committee 
Subject: Re: Wendy and Marisa on audiobooks

Hi Tzviya and all,

Thanks for the kind words about our video. We’re really glad to see it so well-received!  

Please also feel free to share a direct link to the demo: 
https://marisademeglio.github.io/worlds-best-audiobook/web/library/

I will soon finish the CG report, which will be a simple “spec” for synchronized narration. Regarding future directions, we can keep track of the input we get. I think the main types of feedback will be from:

1. Audiobooks producers who decide to create sync narration material 
2. W3C (e.g. WAI, APA)
3. curious onlookers (from whom I’ve already heard “Do video!” “Support parallel highlights!” “Use this other spec!”)

And finally, the important piece will be who is willing to join us in doing this work if it continues. Like Avneesh mentioned, participation so far has been very light.

Thanks
Marisa



  On May 7, 2020, at 05:40, Siegman, Tzviya <tsiegman@wiley.com> wrote:

  I was in WAI Coordination call on Wednesday afternoon. Judy Brewer asked me to provide an update on where we are in Publishing. I received a flood of questions about sync media and accessible audiobooks. There is a bit of misunderstanding about the difference between EPUB and Audiobooks (which I hope I clarified). I think that there would be real interest from Judy and WAI in working on this. Let’s add to the next SC agenda, because there are a host of issues that will come along with this (including why we aren’t using TTML etc.)
   
  Tzviya Siegman
  Information Standards Lead
  Wiley
  201-748-6884
  tsiegman@wiley.com
   
  From: Ivan Herman <ivan@w3.org> 
  Sent: Thursday, May 7, 2020 3:13 AM
  To: W3C Publishing Steering Committee <public-publishing-sc@w3.org>; Marisa DeMeglio <marisa.demeglio@gmail.com>
  Subject: Fwd: Wendy and Marisa on audiobooks
   
  As I said in my comment to the working group, this is brilliant. We should really try to re-use this video as part of our overall outreach.
   
  However… I think there may be more and maybe it is worth discussing it a bit. So far we have concentrated on the future of EPUB 3 in the form of a WG, and we also plan to properly finish the work on Audiobooks in the Publishing Working Group in form of a Rec. What we have not discussed yet is what should happen with the work in the CG Marisa is chairing and, more specifically, with the Synchronized Narration work. Should we think/plan to seriously consider a separate Working Group to bring that forward? If so, which other technical work at W3C should that be paired with? After all, this is clearly not only relevant to publishing audiobooks. 
   
  There are a number of non-trivial issues to consider, mostly about the synchronization [sic!] of this work with other WG-s at the W3C, otherwise the messaging can go wrong. But we should really consider driving this to the mainstream.
   
  WDYT?
   
  Ivan



    Begin forwarded message:
     
    From: "Siegman, Tzviya" <tsiegman@wiley.com>
    Subject: Wendy and Marisa on audiobooks
    Date: 7 May 2020 at 02:52:37 GMT+2
    To: "public-publ-wg@w3.org" <public-publ-wg@w3.org>
    Resent-From: public-publ-wg@w3.org
    Archived-At: <https://www.w3.org/mid/BL0PR02MB4820504147442F270DC44B73D5A50@BL0PR02MB4820.namprd02.prod.outlook.com>
    List-Id: <public-publ-wg.w3.org>
    Message-Id: <BL0PR02MB4820504147442F270DC44B73D5A50@BL0PR02MB4820.namprd02.prod.outlook.com>
     
    Hi PWG,
     
    Wendy Reid and Marisa DeMeglio prepared a video about Audiobooks [1], presented by Booknet Canada in lieu of Techforum, which was cancelled. In addition to presenting a great overview of the Audiobooks spec, they demo 3 versions of audiobooks, including one implementation with Sync Media!
     
    Thanks Wendy and Marisa!
     
    [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LVcVUSqtOY&feature=youtu.be
     
    Tzviya Siegman
    Information Standards Lead
    Wiley
    201-748-6884
    tsiegman@wiley.com
   

  ----
  Ivan Herman, W3C 
  Home: http://www.w3.org/People/Ivan/
  mobile: +31-641044153
  ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0782-2704