mteixeira-wwn
commented
2 years ago @wareid would you or someone from the WG who has the context for this issue be able to lead a discussion about it at this week's CG meeting on Wednesday?
Open wareid opened 2 years ago
mteixeira-wwn
commented
2 years ago @wareid would you or someone from the WG who has the context for this issue be able to lead a discussion about it at this week's CG meeting on Wednesday?
Jeffxz
commented
2 years ago Action item from the last CG meeting. I will work with @wareid to collect use cases and document then we can discuss further base on use cases to see what are the problems we are trying to solve.
I personally agree with there needs a well defined and recognized way to let FXL book publisher who would like to provide end user a reflowable way or other way to let user be able to change font and so on. My question is, if to provide a reflowable way is the direction to go which will introduce a lot of complexity of metadata of use "Visual To Textual using Fallbacks" or content complexity if go with "Visual to Textual Explainer". And will publisher actually willing to create a totally different reflowable book instead of providing a more complicated way to help a11y. I can see a very good example of target content category would be magazine I wonder if we could get some feedback from magazine publisher on this as well.
Jeffxz
commented
2 years ago Also, comparing between the two approaches
For Visual to Textual Explainer I think one difficulty might be how to let web browser switching between different stylesheet. Could not find a media query could support this yet I think it's probably fxl and reflowable are not two different media type.
For Visual to Textual using Fallbacks can this spec help? Or is there any gap between use case and this example?
wareid
commented
2 years ago To reformat into the use case format:
As a print-disabled reader I would like to be able to view fixed layout content in both the intended format and a reflowable format so that I am able to adjust the text to meet my needs or use assistive technologies.
Users with print disabilities, particularly users with low vision or cognitive/learning disabilities, are currently unable to adjust the presentation of text within fixed layout publications. This adjustment is essential to their ability to read the content.
Visual to Textual Explainer Visual to Textual using Fallbacks
The Fixed Layout Accessibility TF in the working group has been working on a number of best practices for the accessible development of fixed layout content.
In discussing those best practices, we consistently encountered one major issue with accessibility: fixed text is really difficult to make accessible for those with disabilities like low vision, learning disabilities, or cognitive disabilities. Anyone with a print disability that benefits from things like changing fonts, font size, layout, highlighting, or affordances that rely on manipulation of the text or format are left out by FXL in general.
We came to a conclusion that creating a method for transforming the text of a FXL book into reflow that is controlled by users might be the solution to this issue. This will sound similar to the method proposed in Multiple Renditions, but in the interest of both avoiding a case where we have "separate but equal" content in the same EPUB, and reducing the workload of content creators, we have two main proposed solutions (these interestingly can also be used together, so please read them as such):
Visual to Textual Explainer This method proposes using different style sheets for the same XHTML content document, but with one managing the FXL rendering and one managing a reflow rendering of the same page. This would use media queries in conjunction with an addition to the OPF to signal to a reading system that this book has this rendering method, and the recommendation would be that the RS offers an affordance for switching or loading one rendering or the other, or even displaying them side-by-side or in the same view.
Visual to Textual using Fallbacks This method is similar (and would also rely on a metadata addition to the OPF and possibly multiple style sheets) where a content creator could provide the reflow version of a FXL page as a fallback, and the reading system would provide the affordance described above for switching or loading the different versions.
There's a number of technical questions that get raised by either method, as well as implementation matters, so we're eager for the community to hopefully take an interest in this and see what we can do to make fixed-layout accessible to everyone!