Re: Accessibility Metadata Display Guide for Digital Publications 2.1 is Released!

Good job, thanks for the heads up, I have published the note to a feed in
the newswires
it would be great if subscribers to the service could pull this up in their
feeds, Cheers

[image: image.png]



On Tue, Jan 13, 2026 at 2:43 PM Avneesh Singh <avneesh.sg@gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> Dear Publishing Community,
>
>
>
> Please feel free to circulate broadly!
>
>
>
> The Accessibility Task Force of the W3C Publishing Community Group is
> pleased to announce the release of
>
> “*Accessibility Metadata Display Guide for Digital Publications 2.1.*”
>
>
>
> This guide helps implementers—such as bookstores, retailers, distributors,
> and libraries—present machine-readable accessibility metadata in clear,
> user-friendly ways, enabling users to understand whether a digital
> publication meets their accessibility needs before purchase or use. While
> primarily aimed at implementers, the guide is also useful for content
> creators who wish to understand how their accessibility metadata is exposed
> to end users.
>
>
>
> *What Has Changed in Version 2.1?*
>
> Guidelines Document:
>
> The Guidelines document includes some clarifications and incremental
> improvements in version 2.1, but no significant changes. The high-level
> principles for displaying accessibility metadata remain stable, ensuring
> continuity.
>
>
>
> Techniques Documents (EPUB and ONIX):
>
> The main updates in version 2.1 are in the EPUB and ONIX techniques
> documents, which include important refinements to improve implementation
> clarity and localization support.
>
>
>
> A key enhancement in this release is the introduction of placeholders to
> insert values from the metadata into display strings. Previous versions
> used concatenation to build strings using static and dynamic components,
> but this caused localization issues due to differences in sentence
> structure across languages. The new approach improves flexibility in how
> accessibility information is presented, makes localization easier and more
> accurate across languages, for example, dates can be presented according to
> the local conventions  instead of being hard coded for one region.
>
>
>
> To support this change, the JSON files containing the display terms have
> been updated accordingly, and the techniques documents explain how to
> construct user-facing strings using the new placeholder-based model.
>
>
>
> *Why This Matters*
>
>    - For implementers, version 2.1 provides clearer and more robust
>    techniques without requiring changes to existing guideline-based user
>    interfaces, while significantly improving support for high-quality
>    localization.
>    - For users, especially in non-English contexts, these changes enable
>    clearer, more natural presentation of accessibility information, supporting
>    better-informed discovery and purchasing decisions.
>
>
>
> The documents are available at:
>
>    - Guidelines:
>    https://www.w3.org/publishing/a11y/metadata-display-guide/guidelines/
>    - EPUB Techniques:
>    https://www.w3.org/publishing/a11y/metadata-display-guide/techniques/epub/
>    - ONIX Techniques:
>    https://www.w3.org/publishing/a11y/metadata-display-guide/techniques/onix/
>
>
>
> We welcome localizations of the display terms to facilitate
> implementations in local languages. The updated JSON files are maintained
> at:
>
> https://github.com/w3c/publ-a11y-display-guide-localizations
>
>
>
> Please provide your valuable feedback by opening issues in the Publishing
> Community Group GitHub issue tracker:
>
> https://github.com/w3c/publ-a11y/issues/
>
>
>
> Many thanks to the editors, implementers and participants of the
> Accessibility Task Force for their continued work on the guide.
>
>
>
> Thank you.
>
> Avneesh Singh
>
> Chair of Accessibility Task Force, W3C Publishing CG
>
> Chief Operating Officer, DAISY Consortium
>
>
>
>
>