W3C

Accessibility task force - PMWG

20 November 2025

Attendees

Present
Avneesh Singh, Gautier Chomel, George Kerscher, Gregorio Pellegrino, Matt Garrish
Regrets
-
Chair
Avneesh Singh
Scribe
Gautier Chomel

Meeting minutes

Next steps for extended descriptions use case document.

<Avneesh Singh> https://github.com/w3c/epub-specs/wiki/Standardizing-Extended-Descriptions:-User-Stories,-Testing-Results,-and-Current-Limitations

<Avneesh Singh> https://www.w3.org/TR/explainer-explainer/

Avneesh Singh: we had productive discussion with APA. They asked for an explainer. This is a link about what they call explainer. It is about defining the problem, testing existing solutions, explain why they do not work. we should recommend solution.

Gregorio Pellegrino: I feel it is about restructuring what we already have. Let's try.

Gregorio Pellegrino: the proposal is similar to footnotes. The question is who have time to do this?

Avneesh Singh: we propose a solution for everyone, not only assistive technology users, this is important.

George Kerscher: they noticed it is important for the web, so not aria dupb scope. At least that's not our first proposal.

Gautier Chomel: I would like to do this, as a way to appropriate this topic, I have been an observer ulitmately. I can do that next week. So we can discuss in the next meeting.

Avneesh Singh: Where should this document sit, in PMWG repo? I'll ask chairs where the best we should have this document.

Other items which require attention of accessibility task force?

George Kerscher: my big question is around fixed layout.

Avneesh Singh: I will connect and arrange a call with people who are in both FXL accessibility as well as in Accessibility task force and then we can figure out way forward.

Gregorio Pellegrino: TPAC discussions were mostly about images in spine, we decided not to change anything. i.e. not allowing image in spine without fallback. That's a statut quo. Hadrien will propose a best practice document about using images in spine with fallback. The other point is to start work in pcg a11y tf about comic books accessibility. really a research project.

https://github.com/w3c/epub-specs/discussions/2829

Gautier Chomel: to me a big topic is about presenting reflow aside of fixed. I conceptualise that as parallele contents. Not sure where this standardisation belong, I would like to see it addressed by the accessibility task force.

Avneesh Singh: for comics, we should discuss it in the publishing community group task force. We need to collect examples and start thinking about it.

Avneesh Singh: we've eared about projects ongoing in scandinavia, france, japan, number of them done in relation with EDRLab.

Avneesh Singh: about parallels contents, is it about SMIL?

Gautier Chomel: I see it wider, being able to consume one content in two forms in parrallel, there is syncronisation, but it should allow any content, video, audio, text, other version of a text, fxl, reflow, etc. An example is the poc done by Daniel for Japan, available in Thorium, a parrallel reading of Sign language video and text with highlights at the idea level, not word.

Avneesh Singh: SMIL is outdated anyway, but replacing SMIL in existing structure of EPUB 3 does not make much sense. Better to focus on new way of synchronizing in new publishing format.

Gregorio Pellegrino: I see a need for fxl and reflow contents living aside. It is used by scholar publishers, but not standardised.

Gautier Chomel: yes, there is a reality. there are many use cases, one can wish to switch at document level, resource level, or consume both renditions side by side.

Minutes manually created (not a transcript), formatted by scribe.perl version 248 (Mon Oct 27 20:04:16 2025 UTC).