Dublin Core Accessibility element

In a message to the WAI-IG list, Charles McCathie-Nevil mentioned an
accessibility element that has been proposed for the Dublin Core
metadata specification.
 
In addition to Dublin Core, there was participation by the IMS Global
Learning Consortium, NCAM, and WAI (among others).
 
I haven't yet looked closely at this, but I did want to follow up
briefly; it seems that this material is relevant to our conformance
discussion, and possibly to some of our guidelines (maybe 3.1....)
 
Information is available at
http://www.ozewai.org/DC-term-proposal/overview.htmlelement
 
and
 
the proposal is at
http://www.ozewai.org/DC-term-proposal/prop-reqs-table2.html
 
Here's an extract from the proposal, including the proposed definition
of the accessibility element, some explanatory material, and an example.
 
<blockquote
cite="http://www.ozewai.org/DC-term-proposal/prop-reqs-table2.html">
Label:
Accessibility
Definition:
A reference to a machine-readable profile that describes the qualities
of a resource that can be used to match the needs and preferences of a
user as expressed
in a machine-readable user profile.
Comment:
 
The needs and preferences of users are not defined in terms of
disabilities or required only because a user has disabilities, but they
enable those with
disabilities, among others, to state their requirements.
 
The content of the referenced profile may be expressed in XML, RDF,
EARL, or otherwise. The Information Model for the element is available
along with an
Overview
and
Best Practice Guide.
Examples:
Definition list of 1 items
An XML schema has been developed by IMS that shows how the profile
information can be encoded in XML (see
http://www.imsproject.org/xsd/imsaccmd_v1p0.xsd).
The following example is extracted from the IMS documentation:
 
Block quote start
 
Scenario: An HTML file contains text and an embedded Flash animation
(visual only, no sound). There is also alternative textual content to
the animation
defined by accessibility meta-data as an equivalentResource containing
alternativesToVisual properties. A user profile has a content element
with the alternativesToVisual
preference set and wishes to interact with the aggregate file. The
system applies the matching test on the aggregate HTML resource and sees
it has a hasVisual
property with a value of true. Subsequently it sees the animation has an
equivalentResource with an alternativesToVisual which matches the user's
content
preferences. At this point the system replaces the animation with the
text alternative. The system modifies the aggregate resource by changing
its reference
to the animation to a reference to text, i.e., the embedded Flash
animation's <object> tag is replaced with a <p> tag containing the
alternative textual
content.
Block quote end
list end

 
</blockquote>
 
John
 

"Good design is accessible design." 
John Slatin, Ph.D.
Director, Accessibility Institute
University of Texas at Austin
FAC 248C
1 University Station G9600
Austin, TX 78712
ph 512-495-4288, f 512-495-4524
email jslatin@mail.utexas.edu
web http://www.utexas.edu/research/accessibility/
<http://www.utexas.edu/research/accessibility/>