[lekofraggle]

Hello,
I am an English teacher with some programming experience, and I am incredibly interested in this thread. I have a question, but let me share my goal first.

<Background info...> I began using apple'store iBooks Author to make my class curriculum accessible to all of my students. My goal was to make my books interactive. My first book (The Odyssey) was a huge undertaking, but I created a beta that worked quite well. Then, I started piloting our chromebook program, and much of my literature was flattened again due to lack of cross platform support for iBooks. </Background info...>

So, I have been searching for a way to create a cross-platform, interactive and accessible textbook. I have a copy of indesign, so that can help me author, but I was thinking epub3 was my solution.

So, my surprise... "epub 2 is the same as epub 3" I thought this was not true, and here is why... epub3 supports...
Html5 Web applets
Embedded svg graphics
Embedded video and audio
Interactive slide shows (svg?)
Fixed and reflowable text <-- I think epub2 does this...
Embedded internal and external links that display in a pop-up
And possibly image associated table of contents

My questions are...
How much of my assumptions above are accurate and unique to epub3?
If I am wrong, what format would you recommend?
How do you best recommend creating one?
If even half of the above assumptions are accurate and unique to epub 3, is that not enough to warrant making the shift from epub2 to epub3?

I just got back from ISTE, and few people (even Google representatives) recognized this issue (lack of truly accessible book formatso that are universal), or could help me in my journey to find a solution.

~Jacob