hCard and hCalendar Formats

This was brought to my attention by a colleague:

http://microformats.org/wiki/hcard
http://microformats.org/wiki/hcalendar

This group is making a standard that is using span tags with html class 
names, which worries me when it comes to accessibility.  Is the W3C 
working on a standard that can be used for this purpose?

Tighe K. Lory
New York State Department of Health