Re: Best practice for mp3s in ePubs?

Laura:

In addition to the suggestions that others have made, as a professor at a community college, I found that many of my students did not have solid internet access. As such, I always had to weigh file size vs network access. Some limitations were due to location (rural). Some were socio-economic. Either way, consider your audience as you weigh the decisions. I had students studying multimedia design, and the only technology they had access to at home was a smartphone.

Since I taught web design, my content was completely online. Since I was not limited to the EPUB standard, I was able to make sure of video and audio tags, JavaScript, and Green Sock for animation. I’m now taking those skillsets into the ebook space and will need to make the same decisions. And it brings up the question for me as to what constitutes an ebook? Is it an electronic extension of a print book? Or is it a website in a stand-alone archive? Or is it something in-between?

In the independent publishing space, authors often separate delivery methods into different products to broaden the customer base and the purchasable products. At what point do ebooks become multimedia and interactive experiences? And if that is necessary, does the technology support the demands of the delivery medium? The conversation we have been having about XHTML and HTML falls into that discussion.

I’m following all of these discussions with interest.


Warm Regards,



Dale



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From: Susan Neuhaus <susan@neustudio.com>
Date: Tuesday, May 13, 2025 at 3:51 PM
To: Ciporen, Laura <laura.ciporen@mheducation.com>
Cc: Wysebee Inc. <zxu@wysebee.com>, public-publishingcg@w3.org <public-publishingcg@w3.org>, matt.garrish@gmail.com <matt.garrish@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Best practice for mp3s in ePubs?

Hi Laura,
   I have a colleague who specializes in Children’s Read Aloud books, Keith Snyder from Epubulator.<https://www.epubulator.com/> I contacted him to see if he had any thoughts.

In addition to the specifications and suggestions from Matt and Jeff,  Keith says that there are some factors to take into account when devising the best practices for MP3s in EPUB. Like—
What do you want the book to be like overall?
What audio-related feature(s) are you using the MP3 for?
Do you have a filesize limit?
What platform(s) is this intended for?
Who's the audience?
Is it just a few books, or does production need to scale?

 He thinks that a phone call would be most helpful. Would you like an introduction?

Susan Neuhaus
NeuStudio
We Design Wonder
908.500.7183
neustudio.com<http://neustudio.com>




On May 12, 2025, at 3:42 PM, matt.garrish@gmail.com wrote:

Hi Jeff,

In the text you’ve cited, audio resources are marked as allowed to be remotely hosted above the line you’ve highlighted. It’s generally not a good idea to do that, though, as you’re more likely to have playback problems. It requires an active internet connection and a reading system that will retrieve remote resources. Not all do.

Using HTML’s native <audio> element is almost always a much better solution than rolling your own player via javascript. Aside from the potential pitfalls in making a custom player accessible, it also requires a reading system that supports javascript. Again, not all do.

In terms of making the player more accessible, you can add a name using aria-label. I believe that would also allow voice control software to pick out the player to activate, but I’m not able to test how well it works.

Here are a couple of pages from the DAISY knowledge base on these topics:
https://kb.daisy.org/publishing/docs/html/audio.html

https://kb.daisy.org/publishing/docs/epub/remote-resources.html


Matt

From: Wysebee Inc. <zxu@wysebee.com<mailto:zxu@wysebee.com>>
Sent: May 12, 2025 3:34 PM
To: Ciporen, Laura <laura.ciporen@mheducation.com<mailto:laura.ciporen@mheducation.com>>
Cc: public-publishingcg@w3.org<mailto:public-publishingcg@w3.org>
Subject: Re: Best practice for mp3s in ePubs?

Hi Laura

Here is the spec https://www.w3.org/TR/epub-33/#sec-resource-locations

<image001.png>

For naming of audio player to let voice control say "Play X" would require custom playback button with proper a11y label.

Hope it could help.

Cheers,
Jeff

On 2025-05-12 15:13, Ciporen, Laura wrote:
Thank you so much for your reply, Jeff.
Do you have a link to the specific spec that you are referring to?
We aren’t running into problems with epubchecker, we are just not sure whether the concerns over requiring internet access override the concerns about file size or vice versa. Or, I suppose, if there is no real best practice on this and it’s just up to the creators of ePubs to decide for themselves which concern is most important. And we’re also wondering if there are specs around naming instances of the audio player.
For example:

  1.  You have 10 different vocabulary words on a page and each one has an audio file where you can listen to how to pronounce the word.
  2.  Someone using voice control should be able to say “Play X” to have the correct audio play. But the play buttons aren’t going to visibly say anything besides “play” so I’m looking for whether there are best practices that would allow the voice control user to easily know what to say to play a specific audio file.

-Laura


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Laura Ciporen, CPACC
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P: 646-766-2269
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From: Wysebee Inc. <zxu@wysebee.com><mailto:zxu@wysebee.com>
Sent: Monday, May 12, 2025 2:04 PM
To: Ciporen, Laura <laura.ciporen@mheducation.com><mailto:laura.ciporen@mheducation.com>
Cc: public-publishingcg@w3.org<mailto:public-publishingcg@w3.org>
Subject: Re: Best practice for mp3s in ePubs?

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Hi Laura

1. I believe based on current spec the mp3 files needed to be embedded in epub file.
2. I have not found any existing standard code for a default player. A very basic player should be the html mp3 player. I can help with creating some example (please feel free to reach out if need any help with creating example and testing)
3. I think basically need to pass epubcheck - the epub validation tool.
4. Might need a bit more details on the use case.

Cheers,
Jeff

On 2025-05-12 13:23, Ciporen, Laura wrote:
Hello, all.
I am wondering if there is an accepted best practice for including mp3s in ePubs?

  1.  Which is best?

     *   Streaming (which requires users to be online)
     *   Packaging the files with the ePub (which greatly increases the file size)

  1.  Is there standard code for default players for mp3s in ePubs?

     *   For a short player for tiny clips which would only have a single play/pause button.
     *   Different code for a more complex player for longer audio which might also have ff, rewind, scrubbing, etc.

  1.  If not, are there particular controls that need to be included or avoided?
  2.  Either way, if there are multiple audio files on the same page (or in the ePub as a whole) is there a best practice for identifying each distinctly (primarily to support voice control users being able to easily indicate which audio they want to play).
  3.  Are there any other best practice considerations about including mp3s in ePubs?

     *   (Besides the fact that there should be a text version of the content unless the entire point of an audio is to test someone’s ability to interpret the audio.)

Thank you ever so much!
-Laura

<image002.png><http://www.mheducation.com/>
Laura Ciporen, CPACC
Digital Content Accessibility Manager
McGraw-Hill | Higher Education
1325 Avenue of the Americas, 8th Floor, New York, NY 10019
P: 646-766-2269
laura.ciporen@mheducation.com<mailto:laura.ciporen@mheducation.com>
mheducation.com<http://mheducation.com/>

<image003.jpg>     <image004.png><https://www.accessibilityassociation.org/cpacccertification>

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