I apologise for being 'absent' from this discussion.

As I understood the discussions I was told about, members of the  
Usage Board did not like the word accessibility - maybe Andy was not  
one of those who said this. I tested adaptability and found a lot of  
acceptance in the real world - but take the point that accessibility  
is not a sub-set so much as a reason for it.

I am not sure that the accessibility metadata we have developed is  
not about adaptability: declarations of characteristics such as "not  
suitable for wheelchairs" are perfectly possible because that  
information says the doorway is not adaptable for wheel-chair users  
(IMHO).  Where the information is not about the resource's  
adaptability, we are proposing to use other elements: adaptability  
for the modality and variability of it etc, and the relation element   
for conformance with standards and educational levels etc and the  
title and descriptions elements etc....so I do think the proposed new  
term is needed only to describe the adaptability aspects of the  
resource and should have a definition that makes that clear.

Andy has pointed to problems with understanding the original  
proposal: we have acknowledged them and done a lot of work since  
then. We have also worked on the abstract model and found that what  
we are now proposing is compliant with the DC abstract model - see  
http://dublincore.org/accessibilitywiki/AdaptabilityElementAbstractModel

I hope this helps a bit - keen to see comments...

Liddy

On 05/08/2005, at 6:02 PM, M.Cooper wrote:

> Andy,
>
> Thank you, that explanation clears a lot of things up for me that I
> could not understand (second hand) about the usage board's view and I
> hope will help us move forward.  I agree there is a lot of careful
> wordsmithing to be done but my view that this would be best done  
> under a
> proposed element name of <accessibility> remains.  I am willing to  
> make
> my contribution towards this.
>
> Martyn
>
> _____________
> Martyn Cooper
> Head: Accessibility in Educational Media
> Institute of Educational Technology
> Open University, UK
> Tel: +44 (0)1908 655729
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: DCMI Accessibility Group [mailto:DC- 
> [log in to unmask]]
> On Behalf Of Andy Powell
> Sent: 05 August 2005 08:42
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: From accessibility --> adaptability
>
>
> On Fri, 5 Aug 2005, M.Cooper wrote:
>
>
>> IMHO the usages board's "problems" with the term accessibility are
>> unfounded.
>>
>
> Martyn,
> Speaking only for myself (but as a member of the usage board), I just
> wanted to comment on this statement...  as far as I recall, the usage
> board did not have a problem with the term 'accessibility' per se.  I
> don't think I did anyway! Rather I had problems with the proposed
> definition of 'accessibility' because I did not think it captured the
> intended semantics of the proposed new element sufficiently well to
> differentiate it from statements about 'usability' and/or 'access
> conditions' (in the sense of access rights or access control).
> Furthermore, I had problems in understanding how the proposed new
> element
> fitted into the abstract model.
>
> It is probably fair to say that both these  
> "problems" (understanding the
>
> semantics and how the element fitted the abstract model) were  
> compounded
>
> by a lack of any real examples of how the proposed new element  
> would be
> used in practice.
>
> Part of the issue was also about whether the proposed element was
> intended
> to be limited to 'Web' resources or whether it was intended to be used
> to
> describe physical resources, such as the accessibility of buildings  
> and
> the like.
>
> Like you, my first reaction on seeing the proposal to rename the WG  
> and
> new element 'adaptability' was to Google for it (specifically for
> 'define:
> adaptability') and, like you, I came to the conclusion that there  
> was no
>
> (or very little) existing usage of that term in this context.  (But I
> have
> to acknowledge that other postings to this list seem to indicate
> otherwise.)
>
> FWIW (which isn't much), my personal view is that changing to
> 'adaptability' makes matters worse rather than better, since, as the
> last
> poster says, being able to adapt something is only a part of the
> 'accessibility' issue.  And that having an element that is  
> sufficiently
> general to be able to say things like "No wheelchair access" is a good
> thing.
>
> Anyway, in summary... whatever any new term in this area is called, I
> think that defining its semantics is going to be very difficult and  
> that
>
> this group may have to spend a lot of time effectively wordsmithing  
> any
> new proposal in order to make it clear.  And that the clarity of  
> any new
>
> proposal will be significantly improved by supplying several (or more)
> examples of how the new term is intended to be used in practice.
> Otherwise it is very difficult for people outside the group to
> understand
> how (or if, in the case of the UB) the new term fits into the abstract
> model.
>
> Andy
> --
> Distributed Systems, UKOLN, University of Bath, Bath, BA2 7AY, UK
> http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/ukoln/staff/a.powell       +44 1225 383933
> Resource Discovery Network http://www.rdn.ac.uk/
>