Re: More metadata questions

Hello John, and all,

A classic example here is the accessModeSufficient authoring patterns, which suggests either/both of comma separated values as well as individual values line-by-line are acceptable. Which is it? Pick one,

accessModeSufficient is a very unique set of metadata where ideally its an array of possible values each of which represent a potential combination set of accessModes that are required to fully consume the content, where this set could consist of a multiple single value or a combination of values.  Which is why this is a repeated metadata entry in the OPF file where each entry is a different set of combined affordances that one could use to “read” the book.

We are trying to make this clearer with the current GitHub issue/pull-request in our guidance document for accessModeSufficient<https://github.com/w3c/epub-specs/pull/2309>

Thanks
Charles
EOM

Charles LaPierre
Principal, Accessibility Standards, and Technical Lead, Global Certified Accessible
Benetech
Twitter: @CLaPierreA11Y



On May 25, 2022, at 7:17 AM, John Foliot <john@foliot.ca<mailto:john@foliot.ca>> wrote:

Hi Tziya, all,

I am a huge fan of metadata, but I personally believe that for metadata to be the most useful, it needs a good and consistent structure so that consuming systems know what they are dealing with unambiguously.

I have found that the expected values (and the instructions for furnishing) the metadata values for both accessibilitySummary and accessModeSufficient are cryptic at best, and down-right confusing at other times. Adding to the confusion is multiple sources of information (the W3C ePub WG, the W3C ePub Community Group, Daisy Consortium, others), and each source seemingly offering conflicting or dis-similar examples... you are right Tziya, I am both comfortable and experienced with digital accessibility as a topic (20+ years), and reading/working with W3C digital standards as a practitioner, and yet I've been struggling here, and I share Tziya's concerns - this is *really* geeky and hard to understand.

My fear is that (at least it as it appears to me) in an effort to be as flexible as possible, (and possibly seeking to meet ePub publishers where they are today, and NOT where we wish them to be tomorrow) that this ambiguity around metadata is actually holding back the standardization progress.

A classic example here is the accessModeSufficient authoring patterns, which suggests either/both of comma separated values as well as individual values line-by-line are acceptable. Which is it? Pick one, and make that the standard - to my mind 'multiple options' is the antithesis of "standard" (but that's just one person's opinion). I often echo back the following re-working of Postel's law<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robustness_principle>: "Be specific in what you ask for, and generous in what you accept."

Finally, I personally tend to be a visual/experiential learner, and inspecting code examples is a preferred mode of learning for me - yet as I noted for accessibilitySummary and the current Community Group document, the two furnished code examples<https://w3c.github.io/publ-a11y/drafts/schema-a11y-summary/#examples> don't even align with each other (versioning question for WCAG). This makes arriving at any expected outcome very difficult to achieve, as I do not even have a "whole pattern" example to inspect and pattern my output against. I offer this, not as a complaint, but as constructive criticism.

Respectfully,

JF

On Wed, May 25, 2022 at 9:21 AM Siegman, Tzviya <tsiegman@wiley.com<mailto:tsiegman@wiley.com>> wrote:
I will be not be able to attend the meeting on Thursday either, but I think John’s questions highlight some major concerns. John has years of experience in the a11y world but is relatively new to EPUB. What about someone who is new to both? What about someone who just wants to read a book and understand if their accessibility needs are being met? I know that we are writing best practices for reading systems too, but I don’t think that we can assume those will be followed. I stress again that we must talk to users. This includes individuals who are assessing their own needs, people from DSOs, and the people writing the metadata at large scale. I fear that we are writing a perfect specification for a world that does not exist.

Tzviya Siegman
Information Standards Principal
Wiley
201-748-6884
tsiegman@wiley.com<mailto:tsiegman@wiley.com>

From: John Foliot <john@foliot.ca<mailto:john@foliot.ca>>
Sent: Wednesday, May 25, 2022 9:17 AM
To: kerscher@montana.com<mailto:kerscher@montana.com>; public-publishingcg@w3.org<mailto:public-publishingcg@w3.org>; W3C EPUB 3 Working Group <public-epub-wg@w3.org<mailto:public-epub-wg@w3.org>>
Subject: Re: More metadata questions

⛔
This is an external email.
Greetings All,

After George's response to my question yesterday, I also received a meeting notice for this Thursday's call, where one of the topics is "Accessibility Summary Authoring Guidelines - Draft Community Group Report 24 May 2022". I hope to attend that call, but would also like to ensure my questions are documented.

I have done a perfunctory review of that document, and note that 2 of my questions from yesterday remain vaguely defined. Specifically:

1) Should the accessibilitySummary reference the *version* of WCAG being used? In the 2 examples provided in that note, the first example DOES reference WCAG 2.0:
 ("
The publication meets WCAG 2.0 Level AA.")
...however, the second example does not:
("...
and it also meets the Web AccessibilityContent Guidelines (WCAG) at the double  "AA"
level.")
[JF please note the typo - requires a space between Accessibility and Content.]

Could this question be clarified and better specified in the document (I would personally recommend that it DOES reference the version number, but normative guidance one way or the other would be appreciated).

2) "Structured" summaries - in my initial email I posed the question, 'could the summary be formatted as structured content?' - i.e. in my example I offered a summary that contained a number of bullet points. Would that be acceptable, or would that be discouraged (or worse, non-conformant)?

EXAMPLE:
accessibilitySummary
"This publication conforms to the EPUB Accessibility 1.1 specification at WCAG 2.1 Level AA.
•       This publication contains mark-up to enable structural navigation and compatibility with assistive technologies.
•       Images in the publication are fully described.
•       The publication supports text reflow and allows for reading systems to apply options for foreground and background colors along with other visual adjustments.
•       Print page numbers are present to enable go-to-page functionality in reading systems.
•       There are no accessibility hazards.
•       The publication is screen-reader friendly."

Might I request that these questions be answered in the emergent document?
Additionally, what is the intended publishing track for this document - will it end up being an ePub WG Note? Other status?

Thanks in advance!

JF


On Tue, May 24, 2022 at 11:01 AM <kerscher@montana.com<mailto:kerscher@montana.com>> wrote:
Hello,

In the Publishing Community Group, we are working on the guidelines for the Accessibility Summary. We meet Thursdays at 14 UTC. I think it would be best to review the work happening there and join that discussion.

John, let me know if you want me to forward you the agenda and meeting information.

Best
George


From: John Foliot <john@foliot.ca<mailto:john@foliot.ca>>
Sent: Tuesday, May 24, 2022 8:41 AM
To: W3C EPUB 3 Working Group <public-epub-wg@w3.org<mailto:public-epub-wg@w3.org>>
Subject: More metadata questions

Hello,

After reading through the documentation, I still have a question or two related to accessibilitySummary. Specifically, there are examples out there that, if not contradicting themselves, show different authoring patterns/examples which leaves me a wee bit uncertain what is the best pattern to use.

Specifically, at Schema.org<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/schema.org/accessibilitySummary__;!!N11eV2iwtfs!qad7OFsEY9Sm78_5YJSvo2XnGqGWPVHRkjyD0TYqfekUqiVR75yOio3qWjtGQ5FB6uqTYylQw5-c$> (linked from EPUB Accessibility 1.1<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.w3.org/TR/epub-a11y-11/__;!!N11eV2iwtfs!qad7OFsEY9Sm78_5YJSvo2XnGqGWPVHRkjyD0TYqfekUqiVR75yOio3qWjtGQ5FB6uqTYyr8Ie0_$>) the example offered there is:
accessibilitySummary
"Captions provided in English; short scenes in French have English subtitles instead."

However, at the Daisy<https://urldefense.com/v3/__http:/kb.daisy.org/publishing/docs/metadata/schema.org/accessibilitySummary.html__;!!N11eV2iwtfs!qad7OFsEY9Sm78_5YJSvo2XnGqGWPVHRkjyD0TYqfekUqiVR75yOio3qWjtGQ5FB6uqTYwnjJn3i$> Accessible Publishing Knowledge Base<https://urldefense.com/v3/__http:/kb.daisy.org/publishing/docs/metadata/schema.org/accessibilitySummary.html__;!!N11eV2iwtfs!qad7OFsEY9Sm78_5YJSvo2XnGqGWPVHRkjyD0TYqfekUqiVR75yOio3qWjtGQ5FB6uqTYwnjJn3i$> the example offered there is:
accessibilitySummary
"This publication conforms to the EPUB Accessibility specification at WCAG Level AA."
(JF: and specifically calling out WCAG, but without the version number).

I want to presume that the W3C publication is "more up-to-date", and while the examples don't directly contradict themselves, there are significant differences in what is offered as an authoring example. I want to make the following presumptions, but am seeking a sanity check here (please).

  *   The accessibilitySummary SHOULD<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc2119__;!!N11eV2iwtfs!qad7OFsEY9Sm78_5YJSvo2XnGqGWPVHRkjyD0TYqfekUqiVR75yOio3qWjtGQ5FB6uqTYzorRd57$> reference the version of WCAG that the ePub conforms to.
  *   The accessibilitySummary SHOULD provide content authored primarily to be read by a human.

     *   The accessibilitySummary MUST NOT use structured content (i.e. avoid using lists or tables in the Summary), although correct punctuation is important (seperate key concepts with a semicolon or period). The assumption here is that while the metadata text is likely just string-text (i.e. does not support HMTL markup), the punctuation makes the content more 'readable'.
Based on the two examples, I am looking at essentially merging the prose content from those examples together, to end up with something like:

accessibilitySummary
"This publication conforms to the EPUB Accessibility 1.1 specification at WCAG 2.1 Level AA. This publication contains mark-up to enable structural navigation and compatibility with assistive technologies. Images in the publication are fully described. The publication supports text reflow and allows for reading systems to apply options for foreground and background colors along with other visual adjustments. Print page numbers are present to enable go-to-page functionality in reading systems. There are no accessibility hazards. The publication is screen-reader friendly."

...and so, my final question is, does that summary look acceptable? Or am I overthinking this? While I am presuming NOT(*) to use structured data, should the URLS for EPUB Accessibility 1.1 and WCAG 2.1 specifications be provided in the summary?

(* or am I wrong there? From a readability perspective, I believe the statement could be formatted to be *more* readable by using bullet-points:

accessibilitySummary
"This publication conforms to the EPUB Accessibility 1.1 specification at WCAG 2.1 Level AA.

  *   This publication contains mark-up to enable structural navigation and compatibility with assistive technologies.
  *   Images in the publication are fully described.
  *   The publication supports text reflow and allows for reading systems to apply options for foreground and background colors along with other visual adjustments.
  *   Print page numbers are present to enable go-to-page functionality in reading systems.
  *   There are no accessibility hazards.
  *   The publication is screen-reader friendly."
...but may make it more verbose than necessary, or the formatting would be completely 'lost' by consuming systems. Thoughts? This bulleted list example *IS* more human readable...)

TIA

JF
--
John Foliot |
Senior Industry Specialist, Digital Accessibility |
W3C Accessibility Standards Contributor |
"I made this so long because I did not have time to make it shorter." - Pascal "links go places, buttons do things"


--
John Foliot |
Senior Industry Specialist, Digital Accessibility |
W3C Accessibility Standards Contributor |
"I made this so long because I did not have time to make it shorter." - Pascal "links go places, buttons do things"
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John Foliot |
Senior Industry Specialist, Digital Accessibility |
W3C Accessibility Standards Contributor |

"I made this so long because I did not have time to make it shorter." - Pascal "links go places, buttons do things"