Re: Normative reference to schema.org in EPUB Accessibility?

I would favor accessibility task force under schema.org CG instead of a separate CG for accessibility values.


With regards
Avneesh
From: Dan Brickley 
Sent: Friday, September 10, 2021 19:50
To: Matt Garrish 
Cc: Avneesh Singh ; Ivan Herman ; Philippe le Hégaret ; Ralph Swick ; W3C Chairs of EPUB 3 WG ; W3C Public Archives 
Subject: Re: Normative reference to schema.org in EPUB Accessibility?



On Fri, 10 Sep 2021 at 11:51, Matt Garrish <matt.garrish@gmail.com> wrote:

  > So long as the CGs understand that they’re making proposals to an independent project (Schema.org) and don’t have exclusive say over schema designs



  Absolutely, this is how we’ve approached the accessibility metadata to date. The expectation isn’t that we’ll exclusively own the properties themselves or have an avenue to add whatever we want. We’re only looking to officially reform the work we were doing that led to the submissions, which as far as I’m aware at this point is going to largely focus on maintaining the taxonomy of values that have been defined in the web schemas wiki. If there’s a need for new metadata in the future, we’d go through the same process of proposing it for inclusion.



  I don’t know if we want to take on oversight of all accessibility metadata, though. I believe the general idea was to limit the group to maintaining the taxonomies for the properties we’ve already submitted. (Framing the name and description of the group might still be a bit tricky.)


Thanks - and yes, the scope concern makes sense. One way to think about this could be that these properties are similar to cases where a Schema.org property is designed to take values that are specified and curated by an external group, for example GS1.org assign product identifiers called GTINs, and schema.org/gtin represents that. 



  One question that has been raised is whether we need a separate group to do this or if it can be done as a “task force” within the existing schema.org CG. Do you have a preference?

Either can work but I think a task force metaphor works well here

I raised a request over the (north hemispheric) summer to request a new (tech/implementor) mailing list for Schema.org, public-schemaorg-developers@ —- while this appears to now exist there’s some ongoing confusion on who is auto-subscribed to the list. Assuming we figure this out, I would be happy to make a parallel such list for accessibility schema terms.

I have pinged the sysreq thread on that separately, cc:ing Ivan

Dan



  > and that has equal emphasis on collaborations to *consume* the data, since that’s the path to this data being useful



  We’ve been engaged in this in the publishing community group for EPUB. A first release of a guide for presenting embedded schema.org metadata is soon to be released.



  Matt



  From: Dan Brickley <danbri@danbri.org> 
  Sent: September 10, 2021 7:28 AM
  To: Ivan Herman <ivan@w3.org>
  Cc: Avneesh Singh <avneesh.sg@gmail.com>; Matt Garrish <matt.garrish@gmail.com>; Philippe le Hégaret <plh@w3.org>; Ralph Swick <swick@w3.org>; W3C Chairs of EPUB 3 WG <group-epub-wg-chairs@w3.org>; W3C Public Archives <www-archive@w3.org>
  Subject: Re: Normative reference to schema.org in EPUB Accessibility?





  Hi folks



  On Fri, 10 Sep 2021 at 11:03, Ivan Herman <ivan@w3.org> wrote:

    Ralph, Philippe,



    here is what we are thinking of doing:



    - a separate W3C community group will be set up, whose sole purpose in life will be to be the guardian of the schema.org a11y terms. The CG would take over (and clean up) [1]. Once the setup is done, we will also have to contact schema.org to make the situation clear (and put some sort of redirect from [1] to the new CG's site). 

    - the a11y specification would directly, and normatively, refer to the schema.org vocabulary possibly referring to the Community Group's site, too. We believe that type of stability is important for the community. There is already a PR showing the differences in the spec[2]



    Is this o.k. with you?



  This would be analogous to other areas where Schema.org often pulls in suggestions from a dedicated community with its own (public, open to all etc.) discussions. 



  Often but not always a W3C CG. For fact-checking schemas (Politifact etc.) we (ie Schema.org) engage with experts via the international fact checking network (ifcn). For education/learning, the LRMI project is now a part of the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI), etc. In each case from Schema.org’s perspective it is great to have loosely-coupled collaborations like this but we are generally conservative about making additive (rather than usability/integration) edits unless they’re in the context of an application that will actually use/consume the data. See 

  https://schema.org/docs/howwework.html and nearby.



  So long as the CGs understand that they’re making proposals to an independent project (Schema.org) and don’t have exclusive say over schema designs, these structures can work well. We have found over the years that all topics and domains are rather intermingled and that the idea of definitively delegating areas is fraught with difficulty. For example - medical schemas vs healthcare information vs factchecking vs local business information vs life sciences; we have schemas in all these areas which have touched on the coronavirus situation. 



  I should also mention that there are other areas of Schema.org that touch upon Accessibility, beyond the handful of properties discussed here (eg SpeakableSpecification, or anything wrt MediaObject). My advice would be for the CG to have a scope that helps its participants engage on Schemas for Accessibility in general, and that has equal emphasis on collaborations to *consume* the data, since that’s the path to this data being useful



  Cheers



  Dan





    Thanks



    Ivan





    P.S. A an aside, the new CG would need a github repository under the w3c organization. I hope I have the green light to set up when the time comes.





    [1] https://www.w3.org/wiki/WebSchemas/Accessibility

    [2] https://github.com/w3c/epub-specs/pull/1808









      On 8 Sep 2021, at 22:05, Ralph Swick <swick@w3.org> wrote:





      On 2021-09-08 09:37 AM, Ivan Herman wrote:



        Ralph, Philippe,
        this type of question comes up regularly, but I did not see any clear cut answer.


      There's no absolute determination in advance; this is intentional.  Each case has its own considerations.




        The EPUB Accessibility spec[1] has a section on package metadata[2] to refer to metadata like access mode or accessibility features. The specification defines these terms in general, meaning that it is not properly defined which terms are to be used in a real metadata instantiation; this is left to the separate WG Note on a11y techniques[3] which reveals the thinly veiled fact that, in practice, 


      "thinly veiled" is a big flag for me.  The spec should be clear and as precise as possible about the Working Group's intentions.  If the WG intends that the conformance expectations for an eventual W3C Recommendation maximize interoperability with specific metadata usage it should state so.  If it believes that the schema.org terms and their definitions are the correct solution, it should state so -- and be prepared to argue its position with the Director, the W3C Members, and the Community.




        these general terms refer to their equivalents in schema.org <http://schema.org>[4]. Indeed, all the terms defined in [2] are, actually, defined in schema.org <http://schema.org>, and those are the only mappings for those terms. Those terms are not out of the blue, actually: they have been developed, originally, in cooperation with the IMS Global[5] and are now maintained on [6].


      "maintained on [6]" does give me pause.  [6] does not state a maintenance policy and refers to an issue tracker that uses the pronoun "I" in many places, including its Resolved Issues section, and was last modified on 5 January 2018.  The parent page (WebSchemas) is explicitly disclaimed as "left primarily for historical record".  Is this in fact the authoritative place for maintaining the current accessibility vocabulary?




        The reason of this somewhat weird setting in [2] is to avoid normatively referring to schema.org <http://schema.org>.


      If the WG believes such a normative reference is what the Web needs, it should not shy away from stating that.




          Actually, the accessibility spec has an earlier version published at the ISO, and in ISO land it was a clear no-no to do so. However, W3C is meant to be more flexible and therefore the question does arise. However, our document on normative references[7] is not 100% clear cut for me.
        Hence this mail: does W3C has an official position as for a normative reference to schema.org <http://schema.org> terms?


      In this, as in many things, if the WG is able to obtain a clear and authoritative statement on the stability of the parts it wants to normatively reference, the organization (or community) who "owns" that stability, and the open process by which the referenced material is maintained, that is important to the Director's consideration.




        Specifically, is it possible to simplify [1] and make a clear reference to schema.org <http://schema.org> instead of the hand-weaving approach we have there currently? In case of a positive answer, can we, possibly, add a reference to schema.org <http://schema.org> in [7] just as we do with the WhatWG?


      It depends on the answers to the questions above (and maybe other questions that could arise) :)

      -Ralph




        Thanks for your help
        Ivan
        [1] https://www.w3.org/TR/epub-a11y-11/ <https://www.w3.org/TR/epub-a11y-11/>
        [2] https://www.w3.org/TR/epub-a11y-11/#sec-disc-package <https://www.w3.org/TR/epub-a11y-11/#sec-disc-package>
        [3] https://www.w3.org/TR/epub-a11y-tech-11/#meta-002 <https://www.w3.org/TR/epub-a11y-11/#sec-disc-package>
        [4] https://schema.org/accessMode <https://schema.org/accessMode>
        [5] http://www.imsglobal.org/activity/accessibility <http://www.imsglobal.org/activity/accessibility>
        [6] https://www.w3.org/wiki/WebSchemas/Accessibility <https://www.w3.org/wiki/WebSchemas/Accessibility>
        [7] https://www.w3.org/2013/09/normative-references <https://www.w3.org/2013/09/normative-references>
        ----
        Ivan Herman, W3C
        Home: http://www.w3.org/People/Ivan/ <http://www.w3.org/People/Ivan/>
        mobile: +33 6 52 46 00 43
        ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0782-2704 <https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0782-2704>




    ----
    Ivan Herman, W3C 
    Home: http://www.w3.org/People/Ivan/
    mobile: +33 6 52 46 00 43
    ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0782-2704