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Meeting20260722

Marisa DeMeglio edited this page Jul 22, 2026 · 2 revisions

Accessible Synchronized Multimedia for Publishing Community Group Meeting

Date: 2026-07-22

Location: Zoom

Agenda

  • Welcome new members
  • Collecting use cases
    • Start using the tracker
  • Next meetings

Minutes

Participants

  • Avneesh Singh
  • Daniel Weck
  • Hadrien Gardeur
  • Hiroshi Kawamura
  • Johanna Partanen
  • Lars Wallin
  • Marisa DeMeglio (chair)
  • Shane Friedman
  • Thomas F. K. Jorna

Regrets: Brady Duga, George Kerscher, Matt Garrish, Mattias Karlsson

Meeting Summary

Quick recap

The meeting focused on establishing a user-driven approach to use cases for synchronized media in publishing, particularly EPUB and related standards. Participants introduced themselves and discussed the need for a simple, clear template for describing use cases, considering the needs of various user groups such as readers, producers, teachers, and caregivers. Hiroshi shared urgent real-world requirements from disaster and crisis contexts, highlighting the importance of accessible multimedia content for people with diverse disabilities. The group brainstormed elements to include in the template, such as user roles, context, modalities, assistive technologies, and alignment with WCAG principles. They also discussed the importance of examples and simplicity for non-native English speakers. The conversation ended with plans to develop a template and gather use cases, with suggestions for recurring meetings and contributions from different participants.

Next steps

  • Daniel: Draft use cases related to incorporating sign language video
  • Hadrien: Look into use cases for comics
  • Lars:
    • Research existing use case template systems and bring suggestions to the group.
    • Contribute use cases from real customer cases after returning from vacation.
  • Marisa:
    • Set up the repository with a use case template stub (either as a formal issue template or in the wiki) by next week.
    • Write to W3C contact to see if issue tracker templates can be enabled for the repository.
    • Propose the current meeting time and bi-weekly schedule on the mailing list.
  • Shane and Thomas: Crowdsource use cases from the Storyteller Discord community.

Summary

Digital Publishing Accessibility Team Introduction

Marisa welcomed participants to the meeting and facilitated introductions, with participants sharing their roles and backgrounds in digital publishing, accessibility, and EPUB standards development. Johanna, a new colleague from Celia, introduced herself as being early in her accessibility journey and interested in learning from the group's expertise. The meeting focused on getting acquainted, with participants discussing their current work and backgrounds in digital publishing and accessibility standards.

Text and Audio Synchronization Discussion

The team discussed text and audio synchronization, with Daniel mentioning experiments with sign language video synchronization planned for the year. Lars noted the increased popularity of synchronization features beyond accessibility purposes. Shane Friedman joined the meeting as the maintainer for Storyteller, an open source platform for creating EPUBs with media overlays.

GitHub Issue Templates Setup

The team discussed setting up issue templates in their GitHub repository to better describe use cases when filing issues. Marisa and Daniel explored options for creating and configuring templates, including using the .github folder with YAML files. The group identified key user roles including readers (teachers, caregivers, students), producers, and implementers of synced media reading systems. Shane and Lars provided input on categorizing these user roles for use case submissions.

Accessible Multimedia for Disaster Survivors

Hiroshi presented two real-world project requirements involving multimedia content development for disaster survivors. The first project involves creating accessible multimedia content in Kurdish and Arabic for survivors of genocide in Northern Iraq who have disabilities including blindness, PTSD, and hearing impairments. The second project aims to develop evacuation information kits for people with disabilities in Japan's designated nuclear contaminated zones (UPZ), which affect nearly 5 million people across 30 countries worldwide. Both projects require motion pictures, narration, and accessible content to meet the specific needs of various disability groups including blind individuals, deaf users, and those with intellectual disabilities.

The team discussed identifying urgent use cases with real-world consequences, including addressing needs of users with PTSD, blindness, hearing impairment, deafness, and neurodivergence such as ADHD and dyslexia. Hiroshi suggested leveraging existing international standards for easy reading documentation and disaster situation support, particularly UN documentation and sphere standards. The group agreed to focus on developing template design for these use cases.

Use Case Capture Strategy Discussion

Marisa and Lars discussed approaches to capturing and organizing use cases for their system, with Lars offering to research existing templates and frameworks for object-oriented design. They agreed to focus on more holistic use cases that consider actors, activities, and context rather than just technical preconditions and postconditions. Shane suggested expanding the scope to include context considerations, and the discussion touched on the need to identify target audience groups, including people with dyslexia and other disabilities, though Marisa noted they may not have a comprehensive set of existing personas to reuse.Several team members volunteered to contribute use cases, including Shane and Thomas who offered to crowdsource from the Storyteller Discord community, and Lars who committed to providing use cases after his vacation.

Use Case Template Development

The team discussed creating a template for documenting use cases that would be accessible and understandable for diverse users, including non-native speakers. They agreed to include key attributes in the template such as user location, connectivity, modalities, assistive technologies, interface types, and context details. The group decided to establish a simple template with examples before their next meeting.

Some details about components of a use case

Who are our users?

  • readers
  • producers
  • teachers/caregivers
  • people requiring urgent information

Types of content?

  • trade books
  • textbooks/manuals
  • interactive e-learning
  • services available to survivors
  • multimedia (required for better comprehension)
  • disaster preparedness manual
  • multimedia evacuation instructions for UPZ zone residents

What is the situation of our users?

  • PTSD
  • blindness
  • hearing impairment
  • deafness
  • different languages
  • neurodivergence / ADHD
  • dyslexia
  • requiring easy to read text
  • location: public/private/mobile
  • connectivity: online/offline
  • modalities: listening, reading, going back and forth
  • assistive technologies being used
  • interface: hardware/software/public kiosk

What are they trying to do?

  • What does success mean
  • What does failure look like

We should encourage alignment with WCAG vocab

  • perceive (modalities)
  • operable (navigation)
  • understandable (e.g. easy to read contents, or contents in the correct language)
  • robust (more of a technical requirement)
Next meeting

The group planned to set up bi-weekly recurring meetings starting in late August. Wednesdays at 14 UTC will be the suggested timeslot.