All,
as you know, I think, there has been a lot of work going on in the
accessibility field with respect to metadata.
There are some major activities that may be of interest:
* the CEN activity that is about developing a quality mark for
accessibility - what many of us see as a metadata mark and one which
is fairly controversial as it may be seen either as a quality audit
mark or as a link to information about the accessibility of
resources, so they can be evaluated for a given user before being
delivered. The main activity is called CEN/ISSS Workshop on
Specifications for a European certification scheme concerning the
delivery of a Quality Mark for Web Content Accessibility and some
information is available at http://www.support-eam.org/
* a JTC1 Special Working Group - Accessibility activity to create an
inventory of all the standards and specifications that deal with user
needs and preferences relevant to people with disabilities and then
to identify the gaps (see http://www.euain.org/modules/wfsection/
index.php?&category=213 for a brief description)
and
* the accessibility metadata work in which Dublin Core is working
with IMS, ISO and others (see DC Accessibility Working Group page at
http://dublincore.org/groups/access/). The draft documents are
available and are due to be revised quite extensively so it would be
helpful if we could receive comments soon - there are official
channels for comment via the ISO process but informal comments are
always welcome on this list. The documents are linked to from the
Working Group page.
The last activity is the one that developed a proposal for a new DC
element. So far that has not come to fruition but considerable work
has been done on it. There are documents on the Wiki that may be of
interest and we would certainly like to read comments on this list
(see http://dublincore.org/accessibilitywiki/ for documents in
preparation).
There will be a special day at the forthcoming DC 2005 conference in
Madrid (September 14) and it would be wonderful if members of this
list could join us to work on this element proposal and a new
application profile we want to develop for accessibility.
If you are attending the conference and interested in coming to the
Accessibility/Adaptability sessions, please let me know in advance.
Liddy
|