Publishing Chairs’ Telco — Minutes

Date: 2019-08-23

See also the Agenda and the IRC Log

Attendees

Present: Ivan Herman, George Kerscher, Bill Kasdorf, Dave Cramer, Jeff Jaffe, Mateus Teixeira, Liisa McCloy-Kelley, Garth Conboy, Rachel Comerford

Regrets: Avneesh Singh, Wendy Reid, Luc Audrain

Guests:

Chair: Liisa McCloy-Kelley

Scribe(s): Jeff Jaffe, Ivan Herman

Content:

1. How to survey the publishing landscape to determine interest in advancing EPUB

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: ^^ - any ideas?

bill: Start with orgs that have pubs as members
… societies, educational groups, ITPC, etc.

George Kerscher: An accessible survey tool to put together the questions
… automatically gather the information
… spread the link broadly

bill: +1 to link to survey
… little resistance

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: Need a short message and a link to the survey

Jeff Jaffe: Suggest talking to societies in addition to the survey mechanism

Dave Cramer: https://github.com/w3c/publ-cg/wiki/Features-people-have-requested-for-EPUB

Ivan Herman: Rachel and Dave’s roadmap document had some technical ideas
… could have questions relate to those ideas

dave: I’m wary what we would get from a survey
… no shortage of new ideas for EPUB
… posted a link with many requests
… would want some signal of support from reading systems
… wishes are often scripting or CSS related
… if reading system is not supporting - then won’t help

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: I like the idea of getting more contacts
… societies; asking them to arrange conversations with their members
… business level and technical (feature) level
… like Dave’s idea to sit down with reading systems
… ask them about their roadmap

bill: Difficult to get to the right person in org
… most important to talk to vendors who create epubs
… scholarly guys would say - not getting demand
… but their vendors actually make the epubs
… 2 types of questions
… features requests (which may just be CSS requests)
… business questions - like why is your sector not using epub

George Kerscher: We conducted a recent survey
… JS, Math, details element, etc.
… did you see the results?

Garth Conboy: Don’t recall seeing results

George Kerscher: I will send it out.

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: Yes, we need to bring in vendors
… be mindful how it plays out across the industry
… push and pull
… vendors not doing distribution may not understand all of the requests.
… epub check 4.2 validation has been difficult

Jeff Jaffe: we talked about this for a roadmap beyond epub 3.2
… but as we talk is more a way to reconnect with the community in general
… I like the idea of having a broader outreach

bill: Sounds like market research
… consultants can help with that
… but it costs money

George Kerscher: I reported results of our survey
… without attributing responses to who sent them

Jeff Jaffe: next steps: brainstorming is done in a group, we are doing that
… somebody should pick up these ideas and make a first plan for a survey and the plans
… bring it back here or the bg and discuss it further

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: I can lead, but I cannot do it alone

dave: I can work on the survey questions
… not on outreach plan

bill: I can help on outreach plan

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: I can reach out to Luc on outreach
… I can focus on business questions

all: YES

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: I’ll schedule time to talk in the next week or so.
… would our intention be to have this drafted by the next US BG call
… out by EOY or beginning of year

bill: Don’t want to lose it in the holiday season

Jeff Jaffe: +1

Ivan Herman: You mean the actual sending should be next year.

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: Holiday shutdown coming soon
… AoB?

George Kerscher: ePUB funding
… reached out to Apple; nothing landed yet
… optimistic

Rachel Comerford: Rachel: I pitched a few Australian organizations last night

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: After BG call, many private messages about accessibility
… good level of interest

Jeff Jaffe: : w3c has been offering courses via MIT’s structure
… next one coming up is on a11y
… just a heads up

2. Conversations with Amazon

George Kerscher: Google, MS, Apple, and Amazon came to Daisy’s board meeting
… Joanna Hunt, Kindle, Amazon was great
… open, honest
… EU accessibility requirements
… they are helping us stop EU from defining new standards; instead using the EPUB3 CG approach
… we asked when they will natively support EPUB
… no answer
… but recognition of desirability

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: We’ve also talked with Joanna/Amazon
… open to issues of translating EPUB (accessibility) into their proprietary format
… testing with Amazon and screen readers was pretty good
… started to get quality issues
… “something to do with this WCAG - thing”
… they point to WCAG w/o realizing why
… moving in right direction

bill: Good to hear.
… Can I talk about this publicly

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: I think so.
… Good to “talk-up” the headway

bill: I’m talking about the pivot to practicality

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: Discussed manga with them recently
… they seemed interested in epub
… magic on the back-end

George Kerscher: Kindle delivers a different device depending on device capabilities

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: But they are converging

George Kerscher: They want a single unified format

Jeff Jaffe: two follow ons
… first I wouldn’t be surprised if they would be surprised to an informal interview, she might provide some messages they want to get out there
… also I would say that the epub survey we should think about how to approach amazon
… we can talk to them, try to find what they think

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: Would be interesting to see how Joanna reacts to an outreach
… after all, some companies don’t talk publicly

Jeff Jaffe: she may not be the spokesperson, but keen to have the message out

bill: Can someone make an introduction?
… I would say: “I keep hearing great things - can we talk about it”
… “I’m an independent, discrete, and confidential consultant”

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: I can introduce you.

George Kerscher: And Joanna is joining our calls.

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: George, Dave, and I will report progress in two weeks