Readability (was Re: Minutes from EPUB.Next)

In the area of accessibility, one thing that Adobe has been working on recently that you may not know about, is our Readability initiative - https://www.adobe.com/corporate-responsibility/readability.html

It is not specific to file format and we do utilize Web technology as our technology of choice for the tools that we are building to test and validate.

If folks are interested, I am happy to connect this group with the team driving that effort.

Leonard

From: Avneesh Singh <avneesh.sg@gmail.com>
Date: Friday, October 29, 2021 at 5:39 AM
To: Laurent Le Meur <laurent.lemeur@edrlab.org>, Leonard Rosenthol <lrosenth@adobe.com>
Cc: PBG Steering Committee (Public) <public-publishing-sc@w3.org>, W3C Publishing Business Group <public-publishingbg@w3.org>, public-publishingcg@w3.org <public-publishingcg@w3.org>, public-epub3@w3.org <public-epub3@w3.org>
Subject: Re: Minutes from EPUB.Next
From: Laurent Le Meur
Sent: Friday, October 29, 2021 13:51
“Replacing PDF is not a goal. Offering a better solution than PDF for ebooks, i.e. long reflowable publications, highly accessible for a low cost and optionally multimedia, is a goal. But we're not here to discuss PDF :-)”

Big +1
I would hate to be remembered as a member of anti PDF group. Our goal is to greatly improve publishing standards, and my personal goal + DAISY Consortium’s goal is focused on achieving great accessibility. It does not matter if it is achieved by EPUB or something better. When people approach me for guidance for publishing formats, I give suggestions according to the use cases. EPUB 3 is good for some use cases, HTML is good for some other, and PDF is good for some other.
In fact I have done my engineering and MBA using HTML, PDF, DAISY and also some EPUB, all of them helped me in different situations. (I believe all of you know that I extensively rely on screen readers)

At the same time I would say that my personal inclination is moving more towards native web technologies. 5 to 7 years ago I use to wish for really accessible reading systems which could encourage me to leave my habit of uncompressing EPUB and reading it in browsers. But now I wish for the day when we would not need to use EPUB and the publications would be based on native web technologies, which could be read on default browsers available on all web enabled devices. I do not know if it will take 10 years or more. But I am glad to see that EPUB is embracing web technologies more and more. And happy to see that reading systems are coming along, which will remain an important piece of eco system till this happens.

When I see myself as a visually impaired user, all this discussion on formats look useless to me. Users like me want accessibility, no matter it comes from x format, y format or z format. In fact if Adobe greatly improves accessibility of PDF and PDF reading, I will be glad to see it!

I would be glad to see us working towards improving publishing and improving accessibility of publications, no matter which formats become vehicles for achieving it.

With regards
Avneesh Singh
COO, DAISY Consortium
Le 28 oct. 2021 à 20:20, Leonard Rosenthol <lrosenth@adobe.com> a écrit :

Sorry I was unable to attend the meeting – too many other standards going on right now.   I did, however, have a chance to review the minutes – thanks to Tzviya for providing them.

Ignoring the incorrect information about PDF, its use as a document format and its ability to be made accessible (in compliance with national and international standards, including WCAG) – I did want to comment on the larger question about “Replacing PDF”

Andrew and Tzviya said it very well at the end of the meeting – people who are moving away from PDF for publications are moving to the web (aka HTML).  We’ve talked to many customers in many segments around the world on this particular topic.  What we learned is that they are choosing to do so for a variety of reasons including (but not limited to):
- They know what the web is (and the corollary, they don’t know what EPUB is)
- Everyone has a web browser (and the corollary, they don’t have EPUB Readers)
- They already have tools that produce HTML (and the corollary, they don’t have EPUB tooling or don’t know how to use it)
- They can easily update the material and ensure that recipients are always looking at the right thing.

So as mentioned by a number of folks – this group needs to figure out whether the goal is to provide a better reading/consumption experience “on the web” (aka in browser) *OR* to compete with PDF as a packaged format for “off the web” content distribution and consumption.   As others said – trying to do both isn’t working well for EPUB…

Leonard