Hi Nick,

I can't answer your other questions (previous message in full below), but
this one caught my eye :

>4. Can DC elements be used as the basis for personalising
>information that is exported from a database in order to address
>content-accessibility?

This suggests to me a natural extension of information such as that used in
the foaf [1] RDF vocabulary, to provide a personal accessibility profile
(terrible acronym). A list of personal requirements for acceptable formats
could easily be added (in addition to contact details etc), and a proxy
ought to be relatively easy to set up -  e.g. to run an XSLT transform on
the data/document of interest, yielding (for instance) an image-stripped
representation. Another (slightly cruder) application might be to use EARL
data to decide whether the data/document is appropriate - if it leads to a
navigation black hole, then a user agent could block it.

This is quite closely related to Composite Capabilities/Preference Profiles
(CC/PP) [2], though the emphasis there is on the device (e.g. mobile phone)
rather than the person (who might be browsing from any machine), though
perhaps some of their vocabularies could also be used in the same
environment.

Cheers,
Danny.

[1] http://rdfweb.org/2000/08/why/
[2] http://www.w3.org/Mobile/CCPP/

-----
Dear All,

Can I echo Julian's sentiments? I am involved in advising several projects
that are using DC metadata to facilitate interoperability between all sorts
of digital records. Both digital accessibility and digital preservation are
essential to the long-term success of these projects. I am hoping to
establish exactly how DC might be used to address accessibility - particular
questions include:

1. Is there a proposal to create a DC.accessibility tag as part of either
the simple or the qualified element set?

2. If so, what would go into it?

3. How can the other elements be applied to enhance accessibility (eg. is
there a standard terminology for accessibility-information under the
DC.format tag?)

4. Can DC elements be used as the basis for personalising information that
is exported from a database in order to address content-accessibility?

Apologies if this isn't the forum for these questions, but I am concerned
that some of them have already been answered outside the UK and we are
retreading old ground.

Yours sincerely,

Nick Poole