1. The IDPF & W3C Merger
Understanding the future of accessible ebook standards
Accessing Higher Ground 2017

2. Rachel Comerford Director of Content Standards
Macmillan Learning Co-chair W3C ePUB Community Group
@RallyForA11y

3. Why are we here?
Who are the IDPF and the W3C and how does this merger impact accessibility and ebooks?
What is the accessible ePUB standard and the ePUB for Education standard? Where can they be found?
What are the W3C publishing groups tackling next? How can member of the a11y services community join?

4. The IDPF and the W3C

5. The International Digital Publishing Forum was a trade and standards association for the digital publishing industry, set up to establish a standard for electronic book publishing.
IDPF established the ePUB 3.1 standard before merging with the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium).

6. What is the Publishing Activity at the W3C?
Publishing Working Group
Publishing Business Group
Publishing Steering Committee
EPUB 3 Community Group

7. Who is the Publishing Working Group
“It is the goal of the Publishing Working Group to provide, in concert with other W3C Groups … to make the combination of traditional publishing and the Web complete in terms of the readers’ needs, portability, distribution, archiving, offline access, or reliable cross referencing. In short, all publications—with all their specificities and traditions—should become first- class entities on the Web, as Web Publications.”

8. What is the Publishing Working Group Making?
Web Publication Standard – A collection of one or more web resources organized in a unique group. This could be a journal or magazine article, an in-house document, or a digital book.
Packaged Web Publication Standard – This will define how to combine resources of a Web Publication into a distributable file.
DPUB-ARIA 2.0 Standard – An extension of DPUB-ARIA 1.0 ( this specification will add publishing specific terms to the ARIA vocabulary.
ePUB4 Profile – This will be considered a specific type of Packaged Web Publication

9. Publishing Business Group
This is the home of former IDPF membership.
Task Forces include:
Coordination with W3C
Epubtest.org maintenance
MathML/STEM - make it work!
ISO Standardization of the EPUB family of specs
Implementation across sectors of publishing

10. EPUB 3 Community Group
EPUB Best Practices (including EPUB for Education)
EPUBCheck Task Force
EPUB 3.1 Maintenance

11. But what can I do?
Most people think only the technically-inclined should be involved.
NOPE.

12. Job description for standards involvement
Expressed interested in publishing
Familiar with business use cases OR technical use cases
That’s a really short list of requirements! We don’t bite.

13. What will you do? Technical use cases Business use cases
Writing - technical writing and human writing for non-technical people
Testing (automated and manual)
Implementations
Evangelism
Best Practices
Sanity checks - tell us if what we are doing is a good idea.

14. How to get involved
Create a W3C Account at
Publishing WG (must be W3C member)
Publishing BG (open to anyone)
Publishing CG (open to anyone) login.php?redirect_to=%2Fcommunity%2Fepub3%2Fjoin

15. What W3C documentation do I need to be aware of?

16. Current Specifications and Documentation
WCAG - Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
ARIA/DPUB-ARIA - Accessible Rich Internet Applications
Specification:
Best Practices:
Digital Publishing Module:
EOWG - Education and Outreach Working Group
ePUB Standards

17. What is W3C Publishing Doing Next?

18. Basic Requirements for the Next Generation of Publishing Standards
Addressability: one URL to access the publication, the collection of documents
Components: what resources are part of the publication?
Sequence: what is the default order of the primary resources?
Metadata: how to describe the whole rather than the parts
Personalization: how to allow the reader to adjust the publication’s presentation to suit their needs
Annotations: readers want to highlight, comment, bookmark
Offline: the state of the network should not control the user experience
Example - there is no reference URL for “css” since this is a modular spec. I can point to a table of contents, but not the publication - no systematic notion of a collection - if I get a URL to a publication, it’s unclear where it will lead.

19. Web of STEM? MathML is a W3C standard.
Publishers, ebook reading systems, journals platforms rely on MathJax. Without MathJax, we would be forced to revert to images.
What’s missing?
Elementary math
Chemistry
Support
Those fractions are images

20. Hyperlinks
This link in a “Further Reading” section of Substation Automation opens the user’s default browser.
How does the user return to where they were in the book?
How does this focus shift impact users of Assistive Technology?

21. What about basic Web Functionality?
Publisher implement complex workarounds to address basic display issues such as line numbering:
<p id="bed000999" class="ch2-indent- anofon">“There is nothing funny, boys,...<span class="ch2- line_number">5</span> ..</p>
<p >He constantly sprinkled ...<span class="ch2-line_number">6</span>
.ch2-line_number
{text-indent: 0em; text-align: right; width: 7%; margin: 0.4em -9% auto auto; padding: 0em; font-size: 90%; display: inline-block; float: right;}
Some CSS hacks from the Writer’s Guide:

22. Interactivity can be a challenge
Security concerns and being offline mean that JavaScript is often not supported.
EPUB does not require scripting support, so often publishers do not include it.
EPUB supports scripting, but is often disabled by Reading Systems before display on platforms that are actually scripting-capable.
From the GMAT Test Prep book:

23. Implementation issues
EPUB Reading systems need to adapt in order to meet user needs. This can cause implementation problems.
Pagination—How do we successfully implement pagination without page fidelity
Personalization—reading systems need to implement user font choice, night modes, etc. This can interfere with display, and inappropriately invert image color.
Notes—iBooks nicely pops up footnotes, but without defined behaviors, other reading systems break, and a11y is compromised.

24. What’s My Role?

25. Best Practices
The Publishing Community Group is beginning to document Best Practices for using the ePUB 3.1 format.
Create Best Practice recommendations that cover an international base of users across many different types of publications
Make it easy for publishers to implement standards
Make it easy for ALL users to access content

26. Book Industry Study Group (BISG)
Provide information about the specific verticals they publish in including journals, trade books, text books, etc…
Talk about where they are struggling to figure out how and where to apply standards
Talk about where users are giving them feedback about problems with ebooks

27. Education and Outreach Working Group (EOWG)
Align publishing work with the training and documentation gold standard that the EOWG has set
Working together to develop publishing specific accessibility samples and scenarios that allow publishers to better understand why certain elements need to work in certain ways
Provide you, the consumers of ePUBs and future web publications, with the training about the structure of ePUBs and why their important
Provide you with ways to advocate for this standard to your colleagues.

28. EOWG - Education and Outreach Working Group
3.1 Policies Relating to Web Accessibility update
3.2 Accessible Media Tutorial
3.3 Mobile Accessibility Developers' Intro
3.4 ARIA Developers Intro
3.5 Smart Search
3.6 BAD Update & Support Material
3.7 Tips for Evaluating
3.8 Tips for Advocating
3.9 Tips for Procuring
3.10 Accessibility, Usability, and Inclusion: Related Aspects of a Web for All update
3.11 Accessible UI Components List - ["Widgets Library"]
3.12 Current Work Roles

29. Rachel Comerford Director of Content Standards
Macmillan Learning Co-chair W3C ePUB Community Group
@RallyForA11y