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