Three groups of specifications from the Japan DAISY Consortium

Dear colleagues,

I am writing this mail on behalf of the Technical
Committee of the Japan Daisy Consortium.

I would like to share with you specifications that
have been developed in the Technical Committee.
These are intended to compliment ISO/IEC 23761 EPUB
accessibility and LIA guidelines by providing
functionalities specific to the Japanese language.

Eventually, we hope that metadata for these features
be registered at both Schema.org and ONIX, and that
they will be mentioned in the upcoming JIS version
of ISO/IEC 23761.  These specifications are
preparations for such metadata.

In a nutshell, we would like to allow Japanese users
with print disabilities to find accessible EPUB
publications.  For example, users will be able to
find general-ruby EPUB publications from a large
collection of EPUB publications easily.  See JLreq
for the definition of general-ruby.

There are three groups of specifications.  The first
group is concerned about ruby.  The second is
concerned about the use or non-use of space as word
dividers (wakati-gaki).  The third group is
concerned about switching of horizontal writing and
vertical writing.

All specifications are available at:

https://onedrive.live.com/?authkey=!AADNelSWgTa9cQ0&id=4106E423DCEF597E!44686&cid=4106E423DCEF597E

Three of them are written in English.

- EPUB Accessibility Requirements: Discovery of the
  Accessible Qualities of Ruby

https://onedrive.live.com/view.aspx?cid=4106e423dcef597e&page=view&resid=4106E423DCEF597E!44838&parId=4106E423DCEF597E!44686&authkey=!AADNelSWgTa9cQ0&app=Word

- EPUB Accessibility Requirements: Discovery of the
  Accessible Qualities of Ruby

https://onedrive.live.com/view.aspx?cid=4106e423dcef597e&page=view&resid=4106E423DCEF597E!44691&parId=4106E423DCEF597E!44686&authkey=!AADNelSWgTa9cQ0&app=Word

- EPUB Accessibility Requirements: Discovery of the
  Writing Direction

https://onedrive.live.com/view.aspx?cid=4106e423dcef597e&page=view&resid=4106E423DCEF597E!44694&parId=4106E423DCEF597E!44686&authkey=!AADNelSWgTa9cQ0&app=Word

The current editors' draft of CSS Text Level 4
<https://drafts.csswg.org/css-text-4/> has properties
for using space as word dividers (wakati-gaki).  We
use it as a basis in developing the second group.

The PCG has agreed to create a taskforce for
creating a new version of Alternate Style Tags
<https://www.w3.org/Submission/altss-tags/> as a
community group report.  We use Alternate Style Tags
as a basis in developing the third group.

I explained these specifications in a recent meeting
of the Chinese Text Layout task force (clreq)
<https://w3c.github.io/clreq/homepage/>within
the W3C Internationalization Interest Group.

We have also been in close contact with Florian and
Fantasai in the CSS WG.  In particular, we are aware
of ongoing development of CSS Ruby <http://drafts.csswg.org/css-ruby-1/>.

Our next step is to raise GitHub issues for
requesting ONIX metadata and Schema.org metadata
based on our three groups of specifications.  Meanwhile,
the taskforce for Alternate Style Tags should prepare
a new draft (based on the W3C member body submission
for Alternate Style Tags).


Regards,

MURATA Makoto (The chair of the Technical Committee of the Japan Daisy
Consortium)