Notebook 7 beta blog post

[jtpio]

As discussed in jupyter/nbclassic#214 we should communicate about the upcoming Notebook 7 release, so users and system administrator have enough time to prepare.

There is already a banner in the latest version of the classic notebook: jupyter/notebook#6742

But a more visible post about the new features coming in Notebook 7 will help make users try the beta, report bugs and give feedback.

Here is a draft blog post on Medium explains the context, shows new features in Notebook 7, and link to the migration guide: https://blog.jupyter.org/wip-jupyter-notebook-7-beta-is-available-f24d74ba6585

UPDATE: the latest state of the draft is in this Hackmd document: https://hackmd.io/6kExBNFcRZCIpBtQDrB0ow

Opening a new issue so it can be tracked more easily.

cc @jupyter/notebook-council for awareness, happy to discuss here or during the weekly meeting

[echarles]

I have updated the status of jupyter/nbclassic#214. We have listed 2 blog post (before and after jupyterlab 4) - I have scanned your draft blog post which is a list of new features, without mention of other migration paths or temporary solution around nbclassic. I was under the idea that the first blog would be something including that, and that the second would be more that list of features. Let's discussion today at the dev meeting.

[jtpio]

without mention of other migration paths or temporary solution around nbclassic

It is mentioned above in #24 (comment):

link to the migration guide

And in the post:

[echarles]

The link to the migration guide is broken and should be fixed to https://jupyter-notebook.readthedocs.io/en/latest/migrate_to_notebook7.html

Are we going to share more in details in the blog post the status of support for Notebok 6.5 and NbClassic as the question around extension migration?

I have added a topic to the agenda to discuss the about When to release Notebook 7 ? (How much time between JupyterLab 4 and Notebook 7?). We have already shared about that and I don't think we have defined a timeline as there were no agreement.

I wonder if we could invite more participant from the @jupyter/notebook-council to discuss those important communication next week, and maybe plan 1 hour (so starting 30 minutes before) to have enough time to share thoughts.

[ellisonbg]

Thanks, I can try to make it next week to the longer meeting.

…

On Wed, Apr 5, 2023 at 7:38 AM Eric Charles ***@***.***> wrote: The link to the migration guide is broken and should be fixed to https://jupyter-notebook.readthedocs.io/en/latest/migrate_to_notebook7.html Are we (going) to share more in details in the blog post the status of support for Notebok 6.5 and NbClassic as the question around extension migration? I have added a topic to the agenda to discuss the about When to release Notebook 7 ? (How much time between JupyterLab 4 and Notebook 7?). We have already shared about that and I don't think we have defined a timeline as there were no agreement. I wonder if we could invite more participant from the @jupyter/notebook-council <https://github.com/orgs/jupyter/teams/notebook-council> to discuss those important communication next week, and maybe plan 1 hour (so starting 30 minutes before) to have enough time to share thoughts. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#24 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAAGXUGWU7A7DJNRRQOSOUTW7V7XFANCNFSM6AAAAAAWT3MZMI> . You are receiving this because you are on a team that was mentioned.Message ID: ***@***.***>

-- Brian E. Granger Senior Principal Technologist, AWS AI/ML ***@***.***) On Leave - Professor of Physics and Data Science, Cal Poly @ellisonbg on GitHub

[jtpio]

We have already shared about that and I don't think we have defined a timeline as there were no agreement.

The original idea was to release JupyterLab 4 and Notebook 7 approximately at the same time. With JupyterLab 4 first since Notebook 7 depends on it. During the alpha cycle pre-releases of Notebook 7 were usually made a couple of days after JupyterLab 4 pre-releases.

Are we going to share more in details in the blog post the status of support for Notebok 6.5 and NbClassic as the question around extension migration?

This is a draft post, we can add more content and iterate for sure. Note there is also this existing blog post with details about the migration, that we can link to: https://blog.jupyter.org/jupyter-notebook-6-5-0-release-candidate-4c229c6dab55

[jtpio]

Also as a reminder JupyterLab 4 final is expected early May before JupyterCon 2023. Which is a month from now. Getting a blog post about Notebook out very soon would really help make the upcoming transition more visible.

[echarles]

Also as a reminder JupyterLab 4 final is expected early May before JupyterCon 2023. Which is a month from now. Getting a blog post about Notebook out very soon would really help make the upcoming transition more visible.

Can you share a link propose updates to the current proposal?

Thanks, I can try to make it next week to the longer meeting.

@jupyter/notebook-council Darian has updated the jupyter calendar to start 30m before https://discourse.jupyter.org/t/jupyter-community-calendar/2485

[jtpio]

As discussed during the meeting yesterday, here is the shared Hackmd to iterate on the blog post: https://hackmd.io/6kExBNFcRZCIpBtQDrB0ow?both

Once ready we can create a new story on Medium and add the missing links and legends for screenshots.

Also since this is quite of a major change in the Jupyter world, we should probably publish the Medium from the Jupyter account instead of a personal account. And still list all the authors at the bottom of the post. Some example of previous posts published from the Jupyter account:

• https://blog.jupyter.org/jupyterlab-is-ready-for-users-5a6f039b8906
• https://blog.jupyter.org/a-visual-debugger-for-jupyter-914e61716559

[ellisonbg]

Thanks for sharing, will have a look.

…

On Thu, Apr 13, 2023 at 5:37 AM Jeremy Tuloup ***@***.***> wrote: As discussed during the meeting yesterday <#21 (comment)>, here is the shared Hackmd to iterate on the blog post: https://hackmd.io/6kExBNFcRZCIpBtQDrB0ow?both Once ready we can create a new story on Medium and add the missing links and legends for screenshots. Also since this is quite of a major change in the Jupyter world, we should probably publish the Medium from the Jupyter account instead of a personal account. And still list all the authors at the bottom of the post. Some example of previous posts published from the Jupyter account: - https://blog.jupyter.org/jupyterlab-is-ready-for-users-5a6f039b8906 - https://blog.jupyter.org/a-visual-debugger-for-jupyter-914e61716559 — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#24 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAAGXUDWDP4K7JZMLIYFGCTXA7XPVANCNFSM6AAAAAAWT3MZMI> . You are receiving this because you were mentioned.Message ID: ***@***.***>

-- Brian E. Granger Senior Principal Technologist, AWS AI/ML ***@***.***) On Leave - Professor of Physics and Data Science, Cal Poly @ellisonbg on GitHub

[ellisonbg]

I am also going to run it by the Executive Council next week. This is a big launch I would like to get their input.

…

On Thu, Apr 13, 2023 at 8:49 AM Brian Granger ***@***.***> wrote: Thanks for sharing, will have a look. On Thu, Apr 13, 2023 at 5:37 AM Jeremy Tuloup ***@***.***> wrote: > As discussed during the meeting yesterday > <#21 (comment)>, > here is the shared Hackmd to iterate on the blog post: > https://hackmd.io/6kExBNFcRZCIpBtQDrB0ow?both > > Once ready we can create a new story on Medium and add the missing links > and legends for screenshots. > > Also since this is quite of a major change in the Jupyter world, we > should probably publish the Medium from the Jupyter account instead of a > personal account. And still list all the authors at the bottom of the post. > Some example of previous posts published from the Jupyter account: > > - https://blog.jupyter.org/jupyterlab-is-ready-for-users-5a6f039b8906 > - https://blog.jupyter.org/a-visual-debugger-for-jupyter-914e61716559 > > — > Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub > <#24 (comment)>, > or unsubscribe > <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAAGXUDWDP4K7JZMLIYFGCTXA7XPVANCNFSM6AAAAAAWT3MZMI> > . > You are receiving this because you were mentioned.Message ID: > ***@***.***> > -- Brian E. Granger Senior Principal Technologist, AWS AI/ML ***@***.***) On Leave - Professor of Physics and Data Science, Cal Poly @ellisonbg on GitHub

-- Brian E. Granger Senior Principal Technologist, AWS AI/ML ***@***.***) On Leave - Professor of Physics and Data Science, Cal Poly @ellisonbg on GitHub

[echarles]

I am also going to run it by the Executive Council next week. This is a big launch I would like to get their input.

@ellisonbg Any feedback from the EC on the current blog post content? Once we get the high level directions, we can polish the text.

[afshin]

At the EC office hours today, @andrii-i asked about this blog post and we read the current draft.

Because this is such a strategically important launch, we wanted to make sure we are conveying some of the vision that led to the Notebook 7 and JupyterLab 4 launches.

At the next EC meeting on Tuesday the 25th, we'll take a pass at the draft and have our updates ready for the Wednesday meeting of the Notebook Subproject.

[jtpio]

Thank @afshin for the update 👍

[andrii-i]

Thank you @afshin

[jtpio]

@afshin if the EC also has time to have a look at the documentation for migrating to Notebook 7, that would be great: https://jupyter-notebook.readthedocs.io/en/latest/migrate_to_notebook7.html

Since the current state of the blog post reuses some elements from the documentation.

Thanks!

[andrii-i]

With Notebook 7 release coming soon it would be nice to have Notebook 7 blogpost ready as well (CC @afshin as you mentioned ECs desire to review the blogpost above)

[andrii-i]

Today during office hours EC reviewed Notebook 7 blogpost draft (https://hackmd.io/6kExBNFcRZCIpBtQDrB0ow?both), made edits, and added comments. They liked the overall message and tone (it was pointed out that adding a bit more of "marketing" language might be beneficial though). They also asked us to go over the blogpost again cleaning the grammar, adding links, and taking comments into account. To publish the Medium from the Jupyter account instead of a personal account, we should email the request to do so to @blink1073 and @Ruv7.

From my point of view, blogpost should be published the same day / next day after Notebook 7 release so we should review it finalize by the time Notebook 7 is out.

[jtpio]

FYI 7.0.0rc0 was released today: https://github.com/jupyter/notebook/releases/tag/v7.0.0rc0

It would be great to do a final pass on the blog post, and then create a draft on Medium from the Jupyter account. So we have everything ready to publish it when 7.0.0 final is released.

[andrii-i]

Created #26 requesting to start this weeks notebook call 30 minutes earlier / have it 1 hour long so that during the call we could do a final pass on the blog post

[trallard]

Hey folks. Since the blog post was mentioned at the Jupyter accessibility call and feedback was requested, I thought I would share some thoughts.

Upon first read of the blog post, I did not notice anything accessibility-related but instead, the post links to the New features in Notebook v7 documentation which includes a section on WCAG compliance.
The section excerpts and links to another blog post published a few months back.

TL;DR

• I think it is great that folks are trying to make accessibility-related work and improvements more visible in the official documentation
• However, such documentation must be accurate, transparent, and aligned with the Jupyter community's inclusion goals. After rereading the blog post and based on all the accessibility work in flight and completed within Jupyter, I do not believe the current Notebook’s accessibility documentation meets those requirements (more details below, including suggestions on how to best present this information).

The long version

Since the content in the Jupyter Notebook’s documentation is a small excerpt of the blog post in Medium - I will center my feedback on the latter as readers are directed to it for more information (from the Notebook docs).

1. The blog post includes biased and problematic language, such as:

   1. population has a disability that may impair their ability to use online services ¹
   2. it requires accommodating a broad range of disabilities, including vision, motor, and cognitive impairments
   3. users who have specific needs

   The last phrase is a variation of the often-used "special needs" phrase. Us people with disabilities have the same access needs to physical and online spaces as everyone else. Therefore, they are not special needs but rather access needs.
   All these phrases somehow imply that something is wrong with us that needs fixing, while in reality, we cannot exercise our access rights (because it is by law a right) due to multiple systemic, attitudinal, and environmental barriers.

   If we don’t want them to be excluded from learning sciences, technology, and engineering,

   In the same spirit, it deflects the responsibility from the Jupyter community to the disabled community. Our goal is disability justice and inclusion, and to do so, we must first acknowledge that the many barriers limiting the participation of people with disabilities in STEM are there because of us, the ones creating and maintaining the tools.
   We (the ones working on accessibility) are not the saviors of the disabled community nor preventing their exclusion, but rather are working towards removing existing barriers that have for a long time excluded people with disabilities from our communities.

2. Some information is not entirely accurate, such as:

   Improving the accessibility of Jupyter had long been impeded by significant obstacles. The primary obstacle was that the text editor underlying the Jupyter Notebook (CodeMirror 5) had major accessibility issues.

   I would class the inaccessibility of CodeMirror as a considerable obstacle, but not the primary obstacle for Jupyter tools accessibility. Implying that the inaccessibility of CodeMirror was the primary obstacle for Jupyter accessibility is deflects responsibility from the Jupyter community and the many accessibility issues that have been reported and ignored for years.

   This can be supported through the multiple audits carried out on JupyterLab and Jupyter Notebook:

   • Notebook v7.0.0 for WCAG 2.1 audit (March 2023)
   • Notebook 7 prerelease keyboard navigation review (October 2022)
   • JupyterLab Screen reader with keyboard shortcuts audit (June 2019)
   • JupyterLab v2.2.6 for WCAG 2.1 audit (November 2021)
   • JupyterLab 3.4.3 Zoom Audit (August 2022)

   Through those audits, the community has unveiled many accessibility issues unrelated to CodeMirror, but to the JupyterLab and Jupyter Notebook UIs. Most of them result from considerable accessibility-related technical debt accumulated over the years, lack of accessibility knowledge, accessibility testing and UX/UI design (until recently), and minimal work with the disabled community to understand their needs and ensure we are building products that are usable and accessible to them.

3. Information is incomplete or not detailed enough, such as:

   we made an automated audit of the accessibility of Notebook 7 with these changes, and found that the number of warnings and errors reported by Axe Auditor went down from several hundreds to a few dozen

   we were able to make the Notebook 7 codebase pass the Axe Auditor tests with zero error or warning.

   While some automated audits, or rather automated diagnoses, were performed, there is little depth or information about them. Information that is missing is:

   • What was the methodology used to perform the audits?
   • There is no mention of WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) or which criteria were considered.
   • There is no mention that automated tests only catch up to 30-50% of accessibility issues.
   • How do these improvements align with WCAG conformance, and how do they impact people with disabilities?

   It is estimated that 15% of the population has a disability

   This is a rather conservative number; some sources cite 15% others sources refer to numbers around 20-25% percent. For example, the UK government cites 22% of the population has a disability, while the CDC reports 27% for the US, which can be significantly higher in emerging economies.

   If we account for people with temporary and situational disabilities, this number is also significantly higher.

4. Misleading information or data misrepresentation:

   The below image is presented on both the blog post and the Notebook documentation. I have already covered the lack of supporting information for such automated checks.
   There is insufficient context around this image (in text or alt-text); therefore, this is left up to the reader's interpretation.

   

   Leaving the interpretation of this image up to the reader is problematic for a few reasons:

   1. For the non-accessibility savvy person, this image might be interpreted as the Jupyter Notebook is now fully accessible, which is not the case.
   2. This content is in an official Jupyter source, the Notebook documentation, and therefore, millions of users will take this at face value. This is problematic because it is inaccurate and could damage the community's trust in the project. I have seen other projects or tools making similar claims, only to be found that this was inaccurate, eventually leading to a loss of trust in the project and a break with the disabled community.
   3. There are a number of organizations with compliance requirements; having this type of information can lead to them making decisions that are not in the best interest of their users or the disabled community. And that can lead to legal issues for the organization and a loss of trust among its members.

   CodeMirror 6, a complete rewrite of the text editor with a strong focus on accessibility

   This is a claim I have tried to get more information on CodeMirror docs, discussion forums, and the such and have not found solid details on. I still have to find what that "strong focus of accessibility" means. Or when they say it is more accessible, I still do not know accessible how or to whom. I would like to know if these claims have been tested in Jupyter Notebook beyond the automated checks and, if so, how and what were the results.

   The work by Johan Mabille at QuantStack on migrating JupyterLab to use CodeMirror 6 was funded by Two Sigma.

   AFAIK this was not a single individual work but a team effort. I would like to see the other contributors recognized for their work. I know of more folks involved in this effort, and only one individual is mentioned in the post; I assume this was an oversight?

Recommendations 📝

Since it seems we all agree on making the accessibility work visible, we should do it in a way that transparently and accurately reports the accessibility and usability status of Jupyter Notebooks. I suggest doing a complete re-write of the Jupyter Notebook v7 accessibility docs as a resource if its own rather than depending on an external blog post. By doing so, this could become the foundation of an evergreen resource accurately representing the status of the Jupyter Notebook’s accessibility and usability.
As for Notebook v7 there are other accessibility improvements that have been made and are not mentioned anywhere, the only one captured is the CodeMirror migration and I believe all the other contributions deserve mentioning too.

Upon rewriting, the documentation should contain at least the following information:

• A date/version (s) to which the report/data refers to
• WCAG conformance status
• Compatibility with browsers and assistive technologies
• Technical specifications
• Limitations
• Approaches to accessibility testing and auditing
• What we are working on in terms of accessibility

You can find an example of such an approach in the JupyterLab Accessibility Statement. Which we hope to include in the JupyterLab documentation soon.

Supporting resources 📖

• CDC Disability impacts us all - statistics on disability in the US
• UK disability statistics: Prevalence and life experiences
• Limitations of automated (accessibility) testing

Footnotes

1. Note that certain communities use the term impairment (for example, visually impaired), but this is highly contextualized, and we should always check how people prefer to define/refer to themselves. ↩

[andrii-i]

@trallard thank you for diving deep on this. There are many good points regarding Notebook 7 documentation and "Improving the accessibility of Jupyter" blogpost from Feb 24. We should probably create separate issue(s) in Notebook 7 repo to consolidate discussion and work on addressing these points.

[trallard]

Thanks for taking the time to read through my feedback and concerns and following up @andrii-i. Creating focused issues sounds like a good idea to keep the conversation focused and actionable.

If there is anything I can help with to address any of those points or to work towards an evergreen accessibility statement for Notebook please let me know.

[ivanov]

Thanks you for working on this, @jtpio - the blog post makes sense to me. I just added notes about some minor language tweaks and one typo (the debugger is "line-by-line" not "cell-by-cell" )

[jtpio]

• However, such documentation must be accurate, transparent, and aligned with the Jupyter community's inclusion goals. After rereading the blog post and based on all the accessibility work in flight and completed within Jupyter, I do not believe the current Notebook’s accessibility documentation meets those requirements (

@trallard would you be able to open a PR to update the documentation? Thanks!

[trallard]

@jtpio, when do you need this for?
I am trying to be mindful of my workload and I'd ideally like to get the rest of the jupyter accessibility team folks to make sure I do not miss anything

[jtpio]

Probably not a blocker since the final release is planned for in 2 days on Wednesday 19th: jupyter/notebook#6307 (comment)

So any time or whenever a draft PR is ready, so the discussion can continue there.

[tonyfast]

thanks for working on this y'all.

the accessibility team discussed during last week's meeting. it seemed like we wanted to keep we wanted to keep accessibility mentions to a minimum. even though we don't have critical accessibility measures, we'll miss most of them in this specific release coming out. right now, improving accessibility seems like a really fair mention. any measures of jupyter's accessibility are inconsistent without having an understanding of "what accessibility means to jupyter". we can release further updates as we continue to put accessibility improvements into the application and reach a better understanding ourselves.

[tonyfast]

i do think that there are some problems that were highlight in @trallard's comment in the new features page of notebook 7, we should probably pull back our description of accessibility because it lacks some formalisms for accessibility.

[andrii-i]

@tonyfast @trallard @jtpio, I created issue jupyter/notebook#6981 to track this and PR jupyter/notebook#6982 that would remove the WCAG compliance section from the docs until it is reworked.

[andrii-i]

I updated Notebook 7 Hackmd draft (https://hackmd.io/6kExBNFcRZCIpBtQDrB0ow) but there are a couple of sections I'm not sure about items left:

• Migrating to Notebook 7 - should updates be just accepted?
• Next steps - should we delete this section?
• Authors - not sure what would go here

Let's extend Wednesday July 26 notebook call to 1 hour so we could finalize Notebook 7 blogpost and submit it for publishing (#29).

[jtpio]

remove the WCAG compliance section

Isn't the state of accessibility in Notebook 7 already an improvement compared to the Classic Notebook, so that it could still be briefly mentioned in the docs in a "Accessibility Improvements" section?

For reference the JupyterLab 4.0 section of the changelog has such section: https://jupyterlab.readthedocs.io/en/latest/getting_started/changelog.html#accessibility-improvements

[andrii-i]

@jtpio I reintroduced the accessibility section but removed part of the text that talked about CodeMirror being a major bottleneck, please see latest changes in jupyter/notebook#6981

[andrii-i]

Agree on Notebook 7 being (a significant) accessibility improvement

[jtpio]

Nice thanks @andrii-i 👍

[jtpio]

The blog post has been published 🎉

https://blog.jupyter.org/announcing-jupyter-notebook-7-8d6d66126dcf

[ellisonbg]

Congrats everyone!

…

On Wed, Jul 26, 2023 at 9:48 AM Jeremy Tuloup ***@***.***> wrote: The blog post has been published 🎉 https://blog.jupyter.org/announcing-jupyter-notebook-7-8d6d66126dcf — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#24 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAAGXUD7KOPNDZ2XO34IMOTXSFC57ANCNFSM6AAAAAAWT3MZMI> . You are receiving this because you were mentioned.Message ID: ***@***.***>

-- Brian E. Granger Senior Principal Technologist, AWS AI/ML ***@***.***) On Leave - Professor of Physics and Data Science, Cal Poly @ellisonbg on GitHub