Feedback requested on exceptions and exemptions from publishers
GeorgeKerscher opened this issue · 12 comments
The Publishing Community Group developing the User Experience Guide for the Display of Accessibility Metadata is activitly seeking feed aback on the legal considerations asscoiated with exceptions and exemptions.
Here has been an extensive discussion in a previous issue found at:##280
We are seeking feedback and we currently believe that:
- The exception or exemption should be displayed when required by legal requirements.
- The publisher will provide the legal exception and exemption information in the metadata to assist in B to B transactions
- The display of the exception and exemption would be displayed to end users based on the negotiations between the publisher and the distributor displaying the information.
- If there is unknown accessibility information because of exception or exemptions, the distributor , with the consent of the publisher, may provide contact information, i.e., the display may say, "Contact the publisher for accessibility information."
We do not know what exactly to put into the guidelines and seek feedback.
In regards to this suggestion :
The display of the exception and exemption would be displayed to end users based on the negotiations between the publisher and the distributor displaying the information.
We seek feedback on what any default display should be when there is no term yet agreed between the publisher and distributor.
If a third party wishes to display a text by default - what should it be ? Something very neutral like "This digital product is exempt from the EAA“
Feedback welcome on this as well.
We will not display a calculated or default statement that is declarative about a titles accessibility, or its conformance or exemption from the EAA, in line with the 2.1 instructions (https://w3c.github.io/publ-a11y/UX-Guide-Metadata/draft/principles/#accessibility-claims ) about claims.
What @GeorgeKerscher said in #280 (comment) resonates with us: _
We may want to emphasise that the publisher can clarify the accessibility of the publication or present what they think is appropriate in the accessibility summary. We could then state in example 7 that the details are not intended to be displayed to end users, or We may want to remove the details entirely.
_
Email feedback from Hachette:
The exception or exemption should be displayed when required by legal requirements.
It's not clear what the legal requirements would be. But if it were really essential, it would have to be a generic message like ‘This ebook is exempt from EAA’.
The publisher will provide the legal exception and exemption information in the metadata to assist in B to B transactions
Yes
The display of the exception and exemption would be displayed to end users based on the negotiations between the publisher and the distributor displaying the information.
From a publisher’s perspective it should not be displayed at all
If there is unknown accessibility information because of exception or exemptions, the distributor , with the consent of the publisher, may provide contact information, i.e., the display may say, "Contact the publisher for accessibility information."
Two cases here:
- Accessibility information is provided by the publisher: the distributor should give the information to the customer
- Accessibility information is not provided by the publisher: the distributor could suggest the customer to reach out to the publisher directly or to the local supervisory authority (Arcom for France for instance)
For information on this feedback
Any contact information can already be included in the ONIX file and there is a specific role code already for Accessibility Contact - https://ns.editeur.org/onix/en/198/01
It would be sent like this in ONIX 3
01 Effectiv Publishing Accessibility lead Georgia Smith +1 212 555 0123 gsmith@effectiv.comTo meet the requirements of the EU GPSR, which comes into force in December 2024 and applies to all physical products sold in or to consumers in the EU - we will also be adding the ability to send an address - Street address, postal code and country.
This is to meet the obligation that all retailers must display contact product safety contact information on their websites and all details must also be available in accessible formats.
So any publisher that can not supply an accessible format can at least give full contact details in a structured format which can be used by websites as needed.
It would be better for a publisher to seek legal counsel on this proposal and for W3C to avoid giving advice and also for publishers to check with requirements from platforms that may have other legal requirements - particularly in line with this:
If there is unknown accessibility information because of exception or exemptions, the distributor , with the consent of the publisher, may provide contact information, i.e., the display may say, "Contact the publisher for accessibility information. »
As this may conflict with other legal obligations for retail websites under other EU directives.
A simple generic message as a note ‘This ebook is exempt from EAA’ - makes sense - as this gives the necessary information to those who understand these things but the ordinary consumer will refer to the other accessibility information to check if the title is compatible with their preferred method of reading.
While we are in favor of a generic statement, there is significant potential for confusion if that statement references the EAA (or any specific legislation) when that statement is viewed in another region.
A suggestion:
We are already concatenating several potential statements in the Accessibility Summary field (accessibility_summary, accessibility_addendum, known-limited-accessibility). Rather than create an additional field, why not say that a publisher can create a statement declaring whatever they believe needs to be said for a region, and if that field is not empty, then add it to the end of the Accessibility Summary?
The only problem @rickj is the metadata field already exists and is just a binary option either it exists or doesn't in both ONIX and EPUB metadata. No option to qualify it. The only thing publishers can do now in addition to marking one of these exceptions exist is to qualify it in the accessibilitySummary or similar options in ONIX. So, there is nothing really, we can do at this point. Recommending Publishers qualify this would be in some best practices around using those exemptions which is not this document.
@clapierre Let me clarify... add these to the Accessibility Summary area:
IF eaa_exemption_micro_enterprises is NOT empty: THEN display "The Publisher has claimed that this product falls under European Accessibility Act exemption for Micro-enterprises.
IF eaa_exception_disproportionate_burden is NOT empty: THEN display "The Publisher has claimed that this product falls under European Accessibility Act exception for Disproportionate burden.
IF eaa_exception_fundamental_modification is NOT empty: THEN display "The Publisher has claimed that this product falls under European Accessibility Act exception for Fundamental modification.
Thanks Rick, interesting concept. Perhaps, not sure if this gets us any closer thou to be honest, if the publisher doesn't want that information posted I doubt it matters if its under its own section or added to the accessibilitySummary.
Here was my thought:
- Creating a 'Legal' section creates a lot of expectations and requires nuanced language to be appropriate for all jurisdictions
- Given we have existing EAA specific binary metadata fields, we have to assume someone will use them
- Those fields are claims the publisher is choosing to make. If they don't want to make them, don't include them
- They are related to the same type of claims we are concatenating in the accessibility summary
- Thus... let's make standardized claims for all three, and just include them in the accessibility summary
You make a good point @rickj and we do have something which Publishers already will be calling out something negative in their publication if they include any Hazards, so I tend to agree with you.
I have reviewed the minutes from Oct 24 and all the comments in this thread. I think there are several items we should include in this section.
I am looking forward to the feedback!
Considerations
First, as a person with a disability, I have the right to complain if the publisher claims an exemption or not.
The point is well-taken that publishers may not include this metadata if they believe that would be displayed. This could seriously impact their sales. This means that the general guideline is to not display any information from these metadata fields. All the other metadata will provide a good idea of the accessibility of the publication.
Next, we are working on a worldwide set of guidelines and having a specific jurisdiction (EAA) as a general statement would be in appropriate.
If a particular jurisdiction requires the display of the exemption, then of course that should be displayed. However, the specific exemption or exception would not be meaningful to most people. Therefore we can recommend some generalized language.
Next in an arrangement between distributor and publisher, the contact information of the publisher may be provided, and if they have specific accessibility contact information, that should be provided.
We do not know of jurisdictions that requires the display of exemption or exceptions. This is not carried in the metadata. This means d distributor would need to make the arrangement with the publisher on what to do.
Finally we should point out that the publisher may include whatever they like in the accessibility summary, which could impact the practices agreed upon with the distributor. For example, the publisher may provide their contact information in the accessibility summary.
This means we can provide the above information in "Legal Considerations."
Examples section
In the introduction to the examples, we can state in most cases no legal consideration will be displayed. We can then have the following examples:
1.The publisher wants to have a generic statement claiming an exemption or exception displayed
This means that we would need a descriptive and a compact string that would go into our canonical set of strings.
- The publisher agrees to have a generic statement claiming an exemption or exception, followed by the contact information to their accessibility division.
- A jurisdiction that requires the specific exemption or exception to be displayed.