Another way forward? (Just an idea for discussion)

Greetings all,

As part of an APA task I was assigned, I recently reviewed another W3C
Working Draft ("Web Publications Use Cases and Requirements -
https://www.w3.org/TR/pwp-ucr/) which introduces a proposed concept of a
Manifest file, defined there as:

"...an abstract means to contain information necessary to the proper
management, rendering, and so on, of a publication. This is opposed to
metadata that contains information on the content of the publication like
author, publication date, and so on. The precise format of how such a
manifest is stored is not considered in this document."

I began to wonder aloud if using a similar mechanism (up to, and including
piggy-backing on the Digital Publishing's IG concept of 'manifest' above)
might not be a more efficient and economical way of capturing and
conveying *personalization
options* at a site-wide level (as opposed to the "page" or single-screen
level). I could envision this addressing concerns from both the COGA and LV
Task Forces in a fashion that scales efficiently for developers.

While I don't have a clear vision of how all of this might be accomplished
today, it strikes me as well that working in concert with the Digital
Publishing Group on this piece of the larger puzzle could be quite fruitful.

Please note that I am not at this time suggesting we abandon efforts
produced to date, but I am suggesting that we may want to step back a bit
and ingest the idea of a manifest file as part of our efforts, as clearly
other groups within the W3C are using "manifests" (and/or are proposing to
do so). See also: https://www.w3.org/TR/appmanifest/

Thus, I open this for discussion only - but off the top I think there is
some real merit in thinking about this more.

JF
-- 
John Foliot
Principal Accessibility Strategist
Deque Systems Inc.
john.foliot@deque.com

Advancing the mission of digital accessibility and inclusion