WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: EPUB-Experiences making them?

for

From: L Snider
Date: Dec 5, 2014 7:13AM

Hi Olaf,

Yes, I may not be able to use it for all documents. I can see its best use
is with book like documents. Some will fit nicely into it, and others won't!

I need to do a ton of testing!

I am still mad at Apple and Adobe. There is no reason in 2014 that an
accessible PDF should be a problem, we have come so far and yet we take 4
steps back...I just don't get it.

Cheers

Lisa

On Wed, Dec 3, 2014 at 12:47 PM, Olaf Drümmer < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> Please keep in mind that the original idea had been to make EPUB
> completely page-free, with content flowing as needed. Where a page oriented
> viewer is used pagination would happen in an ad hoc manner, controlled by
> the viewer, and its configuration through the user. [If you can't think
> right away of a not page oriented viewer, think of a text to speech
> presentation of the book content in an audio-book like fashion.]
>
> Those promoting this 'page-free' concept were probably surprised by the
> fact that the world isn't ready yet to say good bye to the concept of
> pages, even not for electronic publication content (I agree with Duff that
> EPUB is probably not a suitable carrier for documents in general). Thus
> page-related features are creeping in from all sides. The concept of page
> numbers had to be introduced, and one of the most favourite recently added
> features is … fixed layout (as in: each page has its own spatial
> arrangement of content items). So much about theory and practice of
> 'page-free'.
>
> Olaf
>
>
> On 3 Dec 2014, at 19:25, <EMAIL REMOVED> wrote:
>
> > I don't believe this is the case, at least not with EPUB 3. The
> > IDPF accessibility guidelines for EPUB 3 specifically talk about
> > putting how to add page numbers in page-spinning lists, for
> > example:
> >
> >
> http://www.idpf.org/accessibility/guidelines/content/xhtml/pagenum.php#xhtm020-faq04
> >
> > Deborah Kaplan
> >
> > On Wed, 3 Dec 2014, Duff Johnson wrote:
> >
> >> Lisa,
> >>
> >>>> Don't author tables, lists, paragraphs, etc that span pages. Unlike
> PDF,
> >>>> EPUB has (so far as I am aware, happy to be corrected) no means of
> >>>> associating semantic structures that span multiple pages.
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>> I would love to know, because I have found that to be unclear in the
> >>> research I have done so far. Books are the best material for ePubs, as
> they
> >>> wouldn't have spanning things except text (although that falls under
> >>> paragraphs)…
> >>
> >> Why would books (or other publications) not include content that spans
> pages?
> >>
> >> How else would books accommodate long (or wide) tables, lists, etc?
> >>
> >> And indeed… how does EPUB handle the situation where a long paragraph
> breaks between pages, often in the middle of a sentence?
> >>
> >> I would suggest caution in adopting a format that could not - in
> principle - accommodate such content (if that's the case).
> >>
> >>> and I am hoping to use ePub on all sorts of documents,
> >>> anything you can think of...
> >>
> >> As you correctly noted, EPUB is designed for publications. It's not
> really a general-purpose electronic document format.
> >>
> >> Thanks for the link, Deborah. Does the book include answers to
> questions about content that spans pages?
> >>
> >> Duff.
> >> > >> > >> > >>
> >>
> >
> > -- > > > > >
> > > >