[Plugin] Access-Aide - help improve epub accessibility

[KevinH]

New version of Access-Aide that works around a quickparser attribute name parsing bug can now be found in the first post.

[oston]

Hi, Kevin,
I thought I had posted this request after the 0.5.5 release, but I don't see the question in this thread, nor when I searched for it. :-(. Apologies if this is a repeated request.

Because of a recent WCAG change, I now get this violation error when checking the epub after running access-aide:

"The language must be specified (xml:lang in OPF package)"

It's very easy to correct, by just inserting xml:lang="en" in the package element in the OPF file.
But could this be included in a future release?
Many thanks
Jim

[KevinH]

Does it specify the language of the metadata? Or something else?

The language of the book is already provided by dc:language. The pure xml has no language.

So perhaps if the package tag needs an xml:lang element it should match the first dc:language tag contents as the dc metadata (titles etc) should be in that language as well?

Does anyone know exact what that attribute on the package tag actually is indicating the language of?

Update:

All I can find in the epub3.2 spec is the following:

The xml:lang attribute on the package tag is *optional*.

In addition ...

xml:lang
Specifies the language of the textual content and attribute values of the carrying element and its descendants, as defined in section 2.12 Language Identification of [xml]. The value of each xml:lang attribute MUST be a well-formed language tag [bcp47].

So the only language dependent pieces of the package tag I can think of are metadata elements.

Unfortunately the lang of the metadata need not match (but typically does) the language used in the epub.

So my guess is we need to default this value to match the epub dc:language value.


Metadata elements can also use alt:language and xml:lang attributes to make things more complex.

[oston]

Thanks, Kevin.
In fixing this in the epubs I've made, I do use the dc:language value and that has always fixed the issue.
This is the reference I also get in the error report:
http://kb.daisy.org/publishing/docs/epub/language.html
Hope this helps.

[KevinH]

It seems it is for the metadata, according to Example 1 at your link:

Example 1

The xml:lang attribute is set to English on the package element to ensure the metadata in the package is correctly interpreted.

I will add this for a future release and assume the primary (first dc:language) value is what the metadata is written in.

It might be a while as I am moving the entire Access-Aide plugin gui to be PySide6/PyQt5 Qt based as Tk has many flaky issues with svgs and with the image table for adding alt values.

[oston]

Originally Posted by KevinH

It might be a while as I am moving the entire Access-Aide plugin gui to be PySide6/PyQt5 Qt based as Tk has many flaky issues with svgs and with the image table for adding alt values.

Many thanks, Kevin. No worries about taking time. Until the release, it's very easy to add this manually to the package.

Jim

[KevinH]

Attached to the first post in this thread is a BETA level version of the next Access-Aide plugin (v0.9.0-Beta) that I would love to have testing and feedback on.

The major changes in this versions are:

v090 - Beta
- completely removed the use of the Tk graphical user interface for image alt text editing because Tk and Pillow have no support for pure svg images and the built in converter was very incomplete.

To replace it, The Qt for Python graphical user interface as provided by
PySide6 (for Qt6) and PyQt5 (for Qt5) is used instead. The resulting Qt
based Alt Text Editing dialog is much improved and much more stable.

As a result the new minimum supported version of Sigil is: ***Sigil 1.60 or later***

- if the OPF package tag does not have an xml:lang element to indicate the primary language of its metadata tags, one is now added based the primary epub dc:language


So if you have Sigil 1.6.0 or later and are willing to test this new Access-Aide and feedback issues or success, please give this one a try.

I will try to keep an equivalent Tk version updated for at least the next year for those who do not use Sigil 1.6.0 or later or those who do not have access to PySide6 or PyQt5 for their external Python plugin interpreter. All Windows and Mac versions of Sigil from 1.60 to today already have the necessary pieces in place to run this Beta.

Thanks for helping out!

[KevinH]

Hi All,

Based on feedback from a few beta testers, the latest production version of the Access-Aide plugin (Version 0.9.1) has now been released. You can download it from the first post in this thread or directly from the plugin folder on my personal github site:

https://github.com/kevinhendricks/Access-Aide

See the first post for information on all changes since the previous production release. They are significant. As a result the new minimum Sigil version is now Sigil 1.6.0 and requires PyQt5 or PySide6 to function. Windows and MacOS users of Sigil 1.6.0 or later using the bundled python interpreter have everything this plugin needs to function. Linux users using external Python interpreters may need to add Python modules given most distributions do not install all of Sigil's requirements.

[oston]

Originally Posted by KevinH

Attached to the first post in this thread is a BETA level version of the next Access-Aide plugin (v0.9.0-Beta) that I would love to have testing and feedback on.

…….

- if the OPF package tag does not have an xml:lang element to indicate the primary language of its metadata tags, one is now added based the primary epub dc:language


So if you have Sigil 1.6.0 or later and are willing to test this new Access-Aide and feedback issues or success, please give this one a try.
…

Thanks for helping out!

Many thanks for this Kevin. I will check this out next week after my (delayed) new PC arrives. My old computer died on me last week ! So I only have an IPad until then.
Jim

[KevinH]

No problems. But please test the 0.9.1 version as it has a few bugs fixed that were reported by the beta testers.

[oston]

Originally Posted by KevinH

No problems. But please test the 0.9.1 version as it has a few bugs fixed that were reported by the beta testers.

Just set up the new computer and tested these updates, including the 0.9.1 version of access-aide, with a new epub (in swedish) I was working on.
It added the lang="sv-SE" item to the package, as expected, in the opf file.
No problems encountered.

Jim

[KevinH]

Great! Glad to hear it.