Refining enumerations -- is slash still appropriate?

Previous participants in the Accessibility Metadata project [1] which
proposed the accessibility properties now part of schema.org [2] are
working on some additional proposals to improve metadata for accessible
ebooks. We will provide a proposal for an additional property shortly.

Today my question is about "extending" enumerations. The older,
slash-based extension mechanism contains guidelines for extending
properties, classes, and enum items [3]. However, the extension mechanism
published in May 2015 covers only properties and classes [4]. How should
extensions to enum items now be handled? For clarity, I suggest we call
these "refinements" rather than extensions to avoid clashing with the
concept of "extending schema.org" when we instead intend to "refine the
meaning of an enum item."

One specific refinement we would like to adopt is an enumeration of kinds
of braille. Currently, the property accessibilityFeature has 29 expected
values, and while this may increase, we prefer that it increase as slowly
as possible. There are many types of braille, and as we look at use cases
for accessible books, we'd like to have a notation such as:
braille/grade1
braille/grade2
braille/ueb
braille/nemeth

And so on. This has the advantage of keeping the list of "core" expected
values shorter as well as the advantage described in the older schema
documentation [3] that tools that aren't aware of the full range of
braille types "can at least partially understand [the] markup and use the
data appropriately."

Is this an appropriate notation to add to the enum items of a property? If
not, is there a recommended way to do this for schema.org? In either case,
what is the best process for getting these approved for addition to the
WebSchemas page [2]?

Thank you,
Madeleine

[1] http://www.a11ymetadata.org/
[2] http://www.w3.org/wiki/WebSchemas/Accessibility
[3] https://schema.org/docs/old_extension.html
[4] https://schema.org/docs/extension.html

-----
Madeleine Rothberg
Senior Subject Matter Expert
National Center for Accessible Media at WGBH
http://ncam.wgbh.org
madeleine_rothberg@wgbh.org

Received on Wednesday, 9 December 2015 15:22:23 UTC