RE: [User Context] alternate taxonomy keys (GPII, Schema.org, etc.) could be implemented as custom media features



>-----Original Message-----
>From: Tab Atkins Jr. [mailto:jackalmage@gmail.com]
>
>CSS.customMedia.set("--gpii-prefers-transcript", true);
>
>Using the script-based API, you can also produce custom MQs with keyword
>or number values.
>

Excellent. Is there a standard mechanism available by which an application running under the host operating system could set this up to be run globally - for every HTML document loaded by the user agent, or selectively, for sites approved by the user? Unfortunately, I suspect it would have to be written separately for each user agent.

The use case would be that a GPII application, or an ISO 24751 application, for example, constructs a profile of the user's needs and preferences, which is then forwarded to the user agent by defining custom media queries. This application could be separate, or part of an assistive technology - that's entirely a matter of implementation detail.

An alternative architecture would be as follows. A Web application (given user authorization) populates the custom media queries, which the user agent then makes available to other browsing contexts, subject to an access control mechanism.

A further complication is introduced by the possibility of multiple providers, e.g., the user agent itself and one or more applications that furnish need/preference profiles (preferably using distinct vocabularies).

Perhaps the main focus of the User Context work should shift to defining howprofiles can be populated and the access control mechanism used, taking advantage of custom media queries as the interface to Web applications that consume these data. The actual vocabularies would be defined elsewhere (GPII, NLS Global Learning Consortium, etc.).

A less radical revision of our scope would combine the above with specifying a common vocabulary intended for wide deployment of need/preference profiles on the Web as a whole. That is, we would specify a limited, standard set of keys, while also allowing those from GPII, NLS and other sources to be used. In either case, I think we need both the details of how the custom media queries are created to be worked out, as well as the access control mechanism whereby the privacy issues are addressed.

Note that user style sheets are only a partial solution: they cannot be used to supply keys that take numeric or keyword values, as noted already in this discussion.


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Received on Friday, 31 October 2014 15:35:59 UTC