Metadata for User-centred, Inclusive Access to
Digital Resources: Realising the Theory of AccessForAll Accessibility

A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Elizabeth A Nevile
Batchelor of Juris Prudence/Batchelor of Law, Master of Education

 

 

School of Mathematical and Geospatial Sciences,
Science, Engineering and Technology Portfolio,
RMIT University.

December 2008.

 

Declaration

Except where due acknowledgement has been made, the work is that of the candidate alone. The work has not been submitted previously, in whole or in part, to qualify for any other academic award. The content of the thesis is the result of work that has been carried out since the official commencement date of the approved research program. No editorial work has been carried out by a third party and ethics procedures and guidelines have been followed.

sign here

Elizabeth A Nevile

date

Acknowledgements

This research has had special assistance from a number of sources. In combination, they have made it possible for work to be undertaken in an integrated and supportive environment. The early analysis of accessible Web Content Development (Appendix 8) was supported by a number of Australian and international agencies. The research has been supported during two periods at University of Tsukuba in Japan where twice the author was a very grateful Visiting Research Scientist.

Some documents based on the research were co-authored in collaboration with members of the IMS Global Learning Consortium, the Dublin Core DC Accessibility Working Group, ISO/IEC JTC1 SC36, and members of the INCITS V2 Working Group and MMI-DC Accessibility and Multilingual Workshops (see Appendices 1 and 2). The author was a working member of all these working groups and is grateful for the environment they created.

 
Supportive bodies Description of assistance
http://ims.edna.edu.au/ IMS Australia, participating in the IMS Web Content Accessibility work was supported by DEST.
http://www.imsproject.org/ IMS Global Learning Consortium Accessibility Working Group - in particular, Jutta Treviranus, Madeleine Rothberg, Cathleen Barstow, Andy Heath, Hazel Kennedy Anastasia Cheetham, David Weinkauf, Mark Norton, Alex Jackl and Martyn Cooper.
http://www.linguistics.unimelb.edu.au/
about/staff/profiles/gruba/
Paul Gruba
http://yahoogroups.com/melb-wag/ MELB-WAG
http://www.martinfordconsultancy.net/ Martin Ford, Martin Ford Consultancy, with whom the author undertook accessibility and metadata standards work in Europe.
http://www.dis.unimelb.edu.au/ University of Melbourne, Department of Information Systems, for a grant to work on WebCT's accessibility, accommodation and a friendly environment in which to work. All were essential and appreciated.
Oregon State University... Particular thanks to John Gardner and others for their help with the difficult topics of haptic representations, mathematics, science etc.
  Very special thanks to Charles McCathieNevile for his encouragement, sharp critique, friendship and, of course, his expert advice.
http://www.latrobe.edu.au/cs/ La Trobe University, Department of Computing and Mathematical Sciences, for a position as an Adjunct Associate Professor and making it easy to do research.
http://www.slis.tsukuba.ac.jp/grad/ University of Tsukuba for wonderful times to work and learn about the Japanese way of life and an interest in further research to do with distributed resources.
  Sophie Lissonnet whose wisdom and support set very high standards to which I can only aspire.
  Behzad Kateli, James Munro and Sarah Pulis, former students and now colleagues who have been engaged with related work, and very helpful throughout the research and offered useful technical advice and personal support.
and my very wonderful, tolerant and supportive family.

Table of acknowledgements

 

Contents

Preface

  Table of contents

  Table of Images

  Table of tables

  Thesis summary

  Abbreviations and Websites

  Glossary of terms

  Relevant Accessibility Organisations

  Relevant Standards Organisations

Chapter 1: Preamble

 
  Introduction

  Background

  An outdated view of accessibility and of the Web

  A new approach to accessibility for Web 3.0

  Understanding and significance of accessibility

  AccessForAll philosophy

  A metadata approach

  AccessForAll metadata research and development

  Research objectives

  Research method

  The eResearch and format of this thesis

  Summary

Chapter 2: Introduction

 
  Introduction  
  The Research  
  Overview of Chapters  
  Preliminary, practical definitions  
  The Web  
  Web 2.0  
  Scope of the Web  
  Accessibility  
  Metadata  
  AccessForAll Metadata  
  Summary of definitions  
 

Research

 
  Scope limitations  
  Research Methodology  
  Background  
  Research Strategies  
  Research Activities  
  Chapter Summary  

Chapter 3: Accessibility and Disability

 
  Introduction  
  Understanding accessibility  
  Models of disability  
  Inaccessibility and users  
  Disability as functional requirements  
  Considerations related to age  
  Language and Cultural considerations  
  Location considerations  
  Content discipline considerations

  Spatial information and accessibility

  Accessible resources

  Examples of accessibility

  Captions

  Structure

  Quantifying the accessibility context

  Accessibility as Economic Advantage

  Chapter Summary

Chapter 4: Universal Design

  Introduction

  The early-history of accessibility

  Separation of Structure and Presentation

  More media, same accessibility

  The WAI Requirements

  WAI Compliance and Conformance

  Special resources for people with disabilities

  Universal Design

  Universal Accessibility - the W3C Approach

  The UK Disabilities Rights Commission Report

  DRC Report findings

  Responses to DRD Report

  Focusing on tools not products

  Chapter Summary

Chapter 5: Other routes to Accessibility

  Introduction

  Beyond 'universal' accessibility

  Accessible code and accessible services

  Responsibility for accessibility

  Correctable accessibility errors

  Quality marks

  A Practical Approach

  Exemplary post-production services and libraries

  Chapter Summary

Chapter 6: Metadata

  Introduction

  Definitions of metadata

  Formal Definition of DC Metadata

  A Formal statement of the Grammar of DC Metadata

  Application Profiles

  Dublin Core Abstract Model

  DC as a mapping language for resources

  Metadata tags

  Representations of DC metadata

  Taxonomies and ontologies

  Other representations of metadata

  Tag clouds

  Topic maps

  Resource Description Framework

  DC metadata and the Semantic Web

  Application profiles

  Cross-walks and mappings

  Chapter summary

Chapter 7: Accessibility Metadata

  Introduction

  Existing accessibility metadata

  Sources of accessible resources and their descriptions

  Dynamic Content Adaptation Services

  Component adaptation services

  Component selection services

  Dublin Core accessibility metadata

  AccessForAll and DC metadata

  Ensuring metadata is not too complicated to be useful

  Accessibility metadata and WCAG 2.0

  Chapter summary

Chapter 8: User needs and preferences

  Introduction

  Individual differences

  Accessibility profiles

  Accessible resources and services

  Relationship Descriptions

  Display descriptions

  Control descriptions

  Content descriptions

  Metadata models

  Profiles of user needs and preferences

  A shared profile

  User needs as a resource

  Accessibility Vocabularies

  Chapter summary

Chapter 9: Resource Profiles

  Introduction

  Primary and equivalent alternative resources (or components)

  Creation of reliable metadata

  The AccessForAll metadata specifications

  Facilitating discovery of alternatives

  Discovery and use of accessible user interfaces

  A universal remote control

  The URC specifications

  Fluid

  Chapter summary

Chapter 10: Implementation, including Matching

  Introduction

  AccessForAll matching in a closed environment

  The value of metadata

  Component reuse

  Access For All matching

  Accessibility transformation and repair services

  Content management servers

  A better approach for publishers

  Proof of concept - does it belong here? maybe lower down?

  Discovery of distributed accessible components

  Constructing a new query

  Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records

  FRBR entity attributes

  Implementation

  AccessForAll recognition

  W3C recognition of AfA metadata in POWDER

  Engage

  SAKAI

  Fluid

  Metadata in WCAG 2.0

  Distributed Accessibility

  FRBR descriptions

  OpenURL

  The future

  Chapter summary

Chapter 11: Interoperability

  Introduction

  Background

  Interoperability an essential characteristic of Metadata

  Developing metadata for interoperability

  Interoperability in educational contexts

  Interoperability of personal needs and preferences

  The Benefits of Interoperability

  Metadata lessons

  Chapter summary

Chapter 12: Conclusion

  Introduction

  Final discussion

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

 

Images and Tables

Images

Page

1 Map showing signatories of UN Convention for the Rights of People with Disabilities in November, 2008 (UN Enable, 2008c)

2 Participants in the AccessForAll development work in a range of contexts.

3 Associations of collaborators in AccessForAll devlopment

4 Relationship between the associations with which the AccessForAll developers work

5 Australian Prime Minister's Website (Pandora, 2007)

6 The metadata as viewed in a Safari browser (Pandora, 2007).

7 The metadata as viewed in a Safari browser (Pandora, 2007).

8 Diagram of Web 2.0 (O'Reilly, 2005)

9 The experience continuum (Saffer, 2005)

10

The simple AccessForAll model that provides individual users with resources that match their accessibility needs and preferences. The user points to a profile that suits them and a matching service adapts the resource to satisfy their requirements.

11 Mapping of metadata scientists by proximity (White & McCain, 1998)

12 New York Times Online (2005)

13 Two versions of contents as perceived by a computer according to correct and incorrect content markup (HFI-markup, 2005)

14 Figure 14: Zoot Suit (Moock, 2005)

15 UK Government Accounting Web Page (UK Government, 2000)

16 Two versions of a Web 'page' showing similarity in sight but differences in sound versions of the same content according to its encoding (HFI-chocolate, 2005).

17 Disabilities piechart (Microsoft, 2003a)

18 Likelihood of difficulties (Microsoft, 2003b)

19 Likelihood of difficulties by population (Microsoft, 2003b)

20 Difficulties by severity (Microsoft, 2003c)

21 Difficulties by age (Microsoft, 2003c)

22 Aging population (Microsoft, 2003c)

23 The requirements for accessibility on the Web (Fischer, 1994)

24 WCAG

25 ATAG-WCAG-UUAG

26 The wider context for accessibility (Kelly et al, 2005, p. 8)

27 a tangram (Kelly, 2006)

28 SWAP diagram from powerpoint slides... http://www.w3.org/2004/06/DI-MCA-WS/presentations/originals/ubaccess.ppt

29 image of PICS showing how one 'number' referred to ten sets of choices

30 simple/complex; global/local

31 DC metadata as grammar (1) (Baker, 2000)

32 DC metadata as grammar (2) (Baker, 2000)

33 DCMI Resource Model (Powell et al, 2007)

34 DCMI Description Set Model (Powell et al, 2007)

35 DCMI Vocabulary Model (Powell et al, 2007)

36 the octopus metaphor...

37 A tag cloud (Library Thing)

38 Topic maps

39 Topics maps as an ontology framework

40 Two fragments of the Semantic Web (Nevile & Lissonnet, 2003)

41 The two map fragments in Figure ??? as combined simply by overlaying the matching entities Q-colour-code #r23g67b98i to form the greater map (Nevile & Lissonnet, 2003).

42 T B-Ls image of sweb

43 the Sweb and the DC models

44 The Singapore Framework (Nilsson, 2007)

45 Front page of the Age newspaper on 9/11/2007 in Safari and Opera Mini showing headlines so phone users can easily select what to read or look at.

46 Accessibility Abstract model (Pulis, 2008)

47 AccessForAll structure and vocabulary (image from AccessForAll Specifications, [IMS Accessibility].

48 Access Extensibility Statement (Jackl, 2003).

49 Diagram showing cycle of searches and role of AccessForAll server

50 What do we need to know about an object for accessibility?

51 Multiple instantiations of a single Web page (HFI-testing).

52 IMS structure for accessibility metadata from 2.3, Page 7, AccMD Norton, 2004

53 A user with a voice-controlled URC and a seated user employing a touch-controlled URC (Gottfried Zimmermann).

54 A wheel-chair user struggling to reach an ATM (HREOC (with permission)).

55 As the items are adjusted for matching to the user's PNP, their DRD more closely matches the PNP.

56 A pyramid based on the Howel model of accessibility ????

57 The repeated use of components in the 48,084 pages on the tested section of the La Trobe University Web site from La Trobe Website audit (Nevile, 2004)

58 The behaviours for interoperability using AccLIP and AccMD in TILE (AccMD IM)

59 ABC Video on demand

60 An AccessForAll process diagram

61 The modified section of the original diagram with a separate filtering service shown highlighted.

62 4 FRBR entities associated with two resources and their possible relationships (Morozumi et al, 2006).

63 Boni et al's pic....

64 The Globe federated search model using ProLearn Query Language. (Ternier et al, 2008)

65 The point of loss of information in the LOM -> DC translation process (Johnston et al, 2007)

66 A possible structure of a future metadata standardization framework.from Mikael Nilsson,

67 Images to illustrate the relationship between database and metadata driven data presentation.

68 Thesis structure

69

70

Tables

Page

The unfinished plan to make WCAG testable (EuroAccessibility, 2003)

A progressive set of images showing how (RDF or other) tagging of content can be used to separate content from tags and then the tags themselves can be tagged, or sorted in multiple ways.

Berners-Lee - The Need for Semantics in the Web (1994).

colour legend

Services offered by the Speech-to-Text Services Network (STSN 2006)

6.2.1 Display Preference Set (Treviranus et al, 2005)

6.2.2 Screen reader Preference Set (Treviranus et al, 2005)

6.2.9 Screen Enhancement Generic Preference Set (Treviranus et al, 2005)

A typical set of user needs and preferences showing the default and the user's individual choices.

Relevant W3C metadata and interoperability activities

 

Thesis Summary

(1000 word summary of thesis - still drafty)

The first decade of international effort to make the Web accessible has not achieved its goal and a different approach is needed. In order to be more inclusive, the Web needs published resources to be described to enable their tailoring for the needs and preferences of individual users. Resources need to be continuously improvable according to a wide range of needs and preferences. Thus there is a need for management of resources that can be achieved with metadata. The specification of metadata to achieve such a goal is complex given the requirements, themselves not previously determined. In fact, such requirements cannot be determined in advance, so the metadata must provide a framework within which the range can be maximised. The other problem is that it is not clear how such specification should be undertaken. There is an emerging science of metadata but so far it is not well articulated.

Accessibility is a term often used to ensure that everyone can access the intellectual content and services of the World Wide Web, given they have appropriate facilities and connectivity. Others use the term to describe property rights and or other aspects of availability of such resources or services. In this thesis, the term is used to mean the capability of individuals to access resources in perceptual modes that are appropriate for them at the time.

Ensuring accessibility of the Web has been a major concern of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) for a decade: those responsible for inventing the Web recognised early that the features such as the graphical user interface that attracted so many to the Web was simultaneously alienating many from it, because they could not perceive content in the form in which most of it is provided. For nearly a decade, the Web has acted as a publishing medium, and efforts to make the publications accessible have been based on a set of guidelines developed by international committees of experts led by the W3C. The guidelines have acted as specifications for developers.

More recently, the Web has become less of a one-way publications medium and, now known as Web 2.0, it is an interactive space in which resources become 'live' objects, capable of reformation and reforming other resources.

What this thesis offers is an argument in favour of an on-going process approach to accessibility of resources that supports continuous improvement of any given resource, not necessarily by the author of the resource, and not necessarily by design or with knowledge of the original resource, by contributors who may be distributed globally. It argues that the current dependence on production guidelines and post-production evaluation of resources as either universally accessible or otherwise, does not adequately provide for either the accessibility necessary for individuals or the continuous or evolutionary approach possible within what is defined as a Web 2.0 environment. It argues that a distributed, social-networking view of the Web as interactive, combined with a social model of disability, given the management tools of machine-readable, interoperable AccessForAll metadata, as developed, can support continuous improvement of the accessibility of the Web with less effort on the part of individual developers and better results for individual users.

This thesis documents the scientific view of metadata upon which effective use of metadata can be based in the context of accessibility. It argues, at a practical level, that metadata is essential and integral to any shift to an on-going process approach to accessibility. It contributes to the science of metadata in as much as it articulates the characteristics of an essential infrastructure for a new approach to accessibility.

(500 words)

----------one para -------

For more than a decade, the suitability and accessibility of Web resources, particularly for people with disabilities and thus special needs, but also others with similar needs for whatever reason, has been a problem. The approach usually taken is to try to encourage authors to comply with a set of technical mark-up standards to make a single resource maximally flexible to fit all users' needs, considered 'universally'. These are not well supported by authoring tools or authors, and research has shown very little improvement in the accessibility of the Web over that period. In addition, what an individual needs is not necessarily well-determined by the technical standards and, in the absence of metadata not usually discoverable. A recently proposed complementary approach allows for management of resource components by metadata so they can be adapted or replaced to fit the profile of an individual user's needs. This new approach has raised issues regarding its effectiveness in the distributed environment of the Web. If and how metadata standards should be developed to perform this role effectively is a major issue for the research. The competing pressures that complicate the development of the proposed standards include definitions of disability, computer science models of information systems, implementation practices of diverse communities who base their work within different paradigms of data management, and the evolving facilities of the Web. The thesis reports research that purports to analyse and synthesise these issues to propose a comprehensive, integrated solution to the problem.

for ref guides see http://www.education.uts.edu.au/fstudents/downloads/APA_Ref_Guide.pdf

 

The eResearch and format of this thesis

It should be noted that this thesis has been written using the practices it advocates. It was written using open Web technologies, not proprietary non-standard software, and it was written to be accessible to all, ab initio. It is recognised that at times this causes problems for those accessing the thesis using non-standardised applications.

The thesis is widely based. In particular, the author has been using the Internet since early in the 1980's and working collaboratively online since the mid-eighties, which predates popular use of the Web. Most of the people with whom the work is undertaken in the relevant fields are open users of the Web: they post their presentations and writing online; they engage in open dialogue on the Web (a requirement for all W3C work and a practice commonly adopted by others in the accessibility field); they do not charge for information about accessibility and they demand that even standards bodies who normally charge for documents, do not in the case of accessibility related materials.

The references in this thesis are, in general, cited as being available on the Web, and thus by their Universal Resource Identifier (URIs). Many organisations are also referred to and, in most cases, their Web sites are linked to their reference. In the printed version of this thesis, the URIs for Websites are listed in the Preamble. They are identified by square brackets (e.g. [W3C]).

Preservation of digital resources is still a problem as it is not clear what can offer a permanent solution to the preservation issue. It is important, at least to pursue persistent URIs. That is, persistent URIs that lead to a document as referred to rather than to a page on the Web that is dynamically generated, and may contain different content when it is retrieved on a subsequent occasion. For this reason, where possible, all digital resources referred to have either been archived specifically by the author, and are cited with a persistent URI, or are referred to with a persistent URI as archived in, for example, the Web Archive [WayBackMachine]. Archiving by the author has been undertaken with the service offered by WebCite [WebCite].

Wikipedia [wikipedia] references have been included in the text. It is not asserted that wikipedia is an authoritative source, but rather that it is a good source of information about the use and understanding of terms by the wider community. References to wikiedia are, therefore, used as evidence of general usage only.

These notes come from the APA - http://www.apastyle.org/elecmedia.html - "Electronic Media and URLs" From the APA Style Guide to Electronic References (©2007). This guide is a revised and updated version of section 4.16 of the fifth edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (2001, pp. 268–281). 2008 American Psychological Association, APA Service Center • 750 First Street, NE • Washington, DC • 20002-4242

 

Abbreviations and Web sites

 

****add special note about iso standards at ISO/IEC 24751-1:2008; ISO/IEC 24751-1:2008; ISO/IEC 24751-1:2008

eg

 

WCAG-1, Chisholm, W., Vanderheiden, G. and Jacobs, I. (1999). Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Version 1.0 http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/

WCAG-2 Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Version 2.0 Caldwell, B., Chisholm, W., Vanderheiden, G. and White, J. (2004). http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/

s 508 s.508 Rehab Act ..... http://www.section508.gov/


ABC Video On Demand http://www.abc.net.au/vod/news/

AbilityNet http://www.abilitynet.co.uk/content/news.htm

AccessMonkey http://webinsight.cs.washington.edu/papers/accessmonkey.pdf

AccLIP BPG, IMS Learner Information Package Accessibility for LIP Best Practice Guide - http://www.imsglobal.org/accessibility/acclipv1p0/imsacclip_bestv1p0.html

AccLIP Binding, IMS Learner Information Package Accessibility for LIP XML Binding - http://www.imsglobal.org/accessibility/acclipv1p0/imsacclip_bindv1p0.html

AccLIP IM, IMS Learner Information Package Accessibility for LIP Information Model - http://www.imsglobal.org/accessibility/acclipv1p0/imsacclip_infov1p0.html

AccLIP Conf, IMS Learner Information Package Accessibility for LIP Conformance Specification - http://www.imsglobal.org/accessibility/acclipv1p0/imsacclip_confv1p0.html

AccLIP UC, IMS Learner Information Package Accessibility for LIP Use Cases - http://www.imsglobal.org/accessibility/acclipv1p0/imsacclip_usecasesv1p0.html

AccMD Overview, IMS AccessForAll Meta-data Overview http://www.imsglobal.org/accessibility/accmdv1p0/imsaccmd_oviewv1p0.html

AccMD IM, IMS AccessForAll Meta-data Information Model http://www.imsglobal.org/accessibility/accmdv1p0/imsaccmd_infov1p0.html

AccMD Binding, IMS AccessForAll Meta-data XML Binding http://www.imsglobal.org/accessibility/accmdv1p0/imsaccmd_bindv1p0.html

AccMD BPG, IMS AccessForAll Meta-data Best Practice Guide http://www.imsglobal.org/accessibility/accmdv1p0/imsaccmd_bestv1p0.html

AccMonitor http://www.hisoftware.com/access/newmonitor.html

AfA, ISO .....

AGLS, AGLS Metadata Standard, Standards Australia 5044 http://www.agls.gov.au/

AJAX, Asynchronous JavaScript and XML http://www.ajax.org/

Alt-i-lab 2005 http://www.imsglobal.org/altilab

Amaya http://www.w3.org/Amaya/

ANEC, the European consumer voice in standardisation http://www.anec.org/

APH, American Printing House for the Blind http://www.aph.org/louis.htm

APLR, CEN APLR, http://www.cen-aplr.org

ATAG, Jutta Treviranus, J., McCathieNevile, C., Jacobs, I., & Richards, J., (Eds), (2000). Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-AUTOOLS/

ATAG WG http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-AUTOOLS/

ATRC, Adaptive Technology Resource Center http://atrc.utoronto.ca/

AVCC The Australian Vice-Chancellors' Committee http://www.avcc.edu.au/

Babelfish http://www.babelfish.org/

Biukili http://biukili.blogspot.com/

BrowseAloud http://www.browsealoud.com/

CAL, Copyright Agency Limited http://www.copyright.com.au/

CanCore http://www.cancore.ca/

CC/PP, World Wide Web Consortium's Composite Capabilities and Personal Preferences specifications http://www.w3.org/Mobile/CCPP/

CEN http://www.cen.eu/

CEN/ISSS Learning Technologies Workshop http://www.cen.eu/cenorm/businessdomains/businessdomains/isss/activity/wslt.asp

CNIB, Canadian National Institute for the Blind http://www.cnib.ca/library/visunet/

Cornell university Library http://www.library.cornell.edu/iris/research/index.html

CSS, Cascading Style Sheets http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/

CWIS Internet Scout http://scout.wisc.edu/Projects/CWIS/

DC Metadata Registry http://dcmi.kc.tsukuba.ac.jp/dcregistry/

DCMI, Dublin Core Metadata Initiative http://dublincore.org/

DCMI Access, Dublin Core Metadata Initiative Accessibility Working Group http://dublincore.org/groups/access/

DCMI Terms, Dublin Core Metadata Initiative Terms http://dublincore.org/documents/dcmi-terms/ Retrieved January 13, 2005, from.

DCMI DCAM, Dublin Core Abstract Model, http://dublincore.org/documents/abstract-model/

DCMI Metadata Registry, http://dublincore.org/dcregistry/

DDS, Dewey Decimal Classification, http://www.oclc.org/dewey/

del.icio.us http://del.icio.us/

digg http://digg.com

DRC, Disability Rights Commission (UK) http://www.drc-gb.org/

DRD, ISO standard for Digital Resource Description (FCD 24751-3, Individualized Adaptability and Accessibility in E-learning, Education and Training Part 3: Access For All Digital Resource Description online at http://jtc1sc36.org/doc/36N1141.pdf.

DTD Document Type Definition http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/sgml/dtd.html

EARL http://www.w3.org/TR/EARL10-Schema/

EdNA, Educational Network of Australia http://www.edna.edu.au/

EduSpecs http://eduspecs.ic.gc.ca/

FLICKR http://www.flickr.com/

Fluid http://fluidproject.org/

Fluid Drag-and-Drop http://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/Drag+and+Drop+Design+Pattern

FRBR Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records Final Report. http://www.ifla.org/VII/s13/frbr/frbr.pdf

GEM Gateway to Educational Materials http://www.learningcommons.org/educators/library/gem.php

Google http://www.Google.com

Google Desktop http://desktop.google.com/

Google Similar Pages http://www.googleguide.com/similar_pages.html

HFI, Human Factors International http://www.humanfactors.com/

HREOC, Human Resources Equal Opportunity Commission of the Australian Federal Government http://www.hreoc.gov.au/

HTML 4.01, HyperText Markup Language. Raggett, D., Le Hors, & A., Jacobs, I., (Eds), (1999). HTML 4.01 Specification http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/

HTTP, Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1. R. Fielding, R., Gettys, J., Mogul, J., Frystyk, H., Masinter, L., Leach, P., & Berners-Lee, T., (Eds), (1999). http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616

Hyperlecture http://www.webcontentaccessibility/AccessibleContentDevelopment/hyperlecture/INDEX.HTM

ICRA Internet Content Ratings Association ???

IEEE 14.84.12.1 - 2002 Standard for Learning Object Metadata: http://ltsc.ieee.org

IEEE/LOM, IEEE Learning Technology Standards Committee .http://ltsc.ieee.org/wg12/20020612-Final-LOM-Draft.html or http://ltsc.ieee.org/wg12/files/LOM_1484_12_1_v1_Final_Draft.pdf

IMS Accessibility http://www.imsglobal.org/accessibility/

IMS AccLIP, IMS Learner Information Package Accessibility for LIP http://www.imsglobal.org/accessibility/index.html#acclip

IMS AccMD, IMS AccessForAll Meta-data Specification http://www.imsglobal.org/accessibility/index.html#accmd

IMS AG, IMS Accessibility Guidelines for Education http://www.imsglobal.org/accessibility/index.html#accguide

IMS GLC, IMS Global Learning Consortium http://www.imsglobal.org/

INCITS V2 community http://v2.incits.org/

Inclusion UK http://inclusion.uwe.ac.uk/

International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences http://www.iadas.net/

ISO http://www.iso.org/

ISO coordinate ref system see http://www.isotc211.org/

ISO 2788 standard (http://www.ontopia.net/topicmaps/materials/tm-vs-thesauri.html#iso-2788)

ISO/IEC JTC1 SC36 http://jtc1sc36.org/

ISO/IEC JTC1 SC35 WG8 User Interfaces for Remote Interaction http://www.open-std.org/JTC1/sc35/wg8/

ISO/IEC 24751-1:2008 Information technology -- Individualized adaptability and accessibility in e-learning, education and training -- Part 1: Framework and reference model. Retrieved September 20, 2008, from http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=41521 Archived 2008-10-15 by WebCite® at http://www.webcitation.org/5bZkMYTzf

ISO/IEC 24751-2:2008 Information technology -- Individualized adaptability and accessibility in e-learning, education and training -- Part 2: "Access for all" personal needs and preferences for digital delivery. Retrieved September 20, 2008, from http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=43603 Archived 2008-10-15 by WebCite® at http://www.webcitation.org/5bZkNUmrw

ISO/IEC 24751-3:2008 Information technology -- Individualized adaptability and accessibility in e-learning, education and training -- Part 3: "Access for all" digital resource description. Retrieved September 20, 2008, from http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=43604 Archived 2008-10-15 by WebCite® at http://www.webcitation.org/5bZkOU1Q0

ISO/IEC 19788-1 Information technology -- Learning, education and training --Metadata for learning resources -- Part 1: Framework Retrieved November 6, 2008, from http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=50772 Archived 2008-10-15 by WebCite® at http://www.webcitation.org/5c7Cw1VcA

KCRC Research Center for Knowledge Communities, University of Tsukuba, Japan http://www.kc.tsukuba.ac.jp/index_en.html

LMS Angel http://www.angellearning.com/

LOM Learning Object Metadata IEEE Standard No.: 1484.12.1-2002 http://www.ieeeltsc.org/standards/1484-12-1-2002

MMI-DC, European Committee for Standardization Meta-Data (Dublin Core) Workshop http://www.cenorm.be/isss/mmi-dc/

Macromedia originally http://www.macromedia.com/software/ now Adobe and at http://www.adobe.com/products/

MAGpie, Media Access Generator http://ncam.wgbh.org/webaccess/magpie/

MathML, Mathematics Markup Language http://www.w3.org/Math/

METS, Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard, http://www.loc.gov/standards/mets/

MRC UNC, Metadata Research Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill http://ils.unc.edu/mrc/

MRP UCB, Metadata Research Program (formerly OASIS), University of California, Berkeley http://metadata.sims.berkeley.edu/index.html

NCD, US National Council on Disability http://www.ncd.gov/

NII National Information Infrastructure http://www.ibiblio.org/nii/toc.html

NLS, National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, Library of Congress http://lcweb.loc.gov/nls/

NIST, National Institute of Standards and Technology http://www.nist.gov/

OAI, Open Archives Initiative http://www.openarchives.org/

OCLC, Online Computer Library Center http://www.oclc.org

Ontopia http://www.ontopia.net/omnigator/models/index.jsp

OOXML ???

Open University, UK, http://www.open.ac.uk/

OpenURI ???

OZeWAI 2004 Conference http://www.OZeWAI.org/2004/

OZeWAI 2007 Conference http://www.OZeWAI.org/2007/

PDF, Portable Document Format http://www.iso.org/iso/catalogue_detail?csnumber=38920

PICS http://www.w3.org/PICS/

PNP, ISO standard text of FCD 24751-2, Individualized Adaptability and Accessibility in E-learning,
Education and Training Part 2: Access For All Personal Needs and Preferences Statement http://jtc1sc36.org/doc/36N1140.pdf

POWDER, http://www.w3.org/2007/powder/

RDF, Resource Description Framework. http://www.w3.org/RDF/

RNIB, Royal national Institute for the Blind. http://www.rnib.org.uk/

RSS, Really Simple Syndication or RDF Site Summary, http://web.resource.org/rss/1.0/spec

s.508 Rehab Act ..... http://www.section508.gov/

SAKAI, SAKAI Collaboration and Learning Environment for Education http://sakaiproject.org/

SALT, Specifications for Accessible Learning Technologies http://ncam.wgbh.org/salt/

SC36, ISO JTC1 SC36, Learning, Education and Training standards http://jtc1sc36.org/ or http://www.iso.org/iso/en/stdsdevelopment/tc/tclist/TechnicalCommitteeDetailPage.TechnicalCommitteeDetail?COMMID=4997

Semantic Web http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/

SENDA Special Educational Needs and Disability Act (2001), an amendment to the Disability Discrimination Act (1995) http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2001/ukpga_20010010_en_1

SGML Standard Generalized Markup Language ISO 8879 http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=16387

SIDAR http://www.sidar.org/

SMIL Synchronised Multimedia Integration Language http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-smil/

STEVE Museum http://www.steve.museum/

STSN Speech-to-Text Services Network http://www.stsn.org/

SVG, World Wide Web Consortium's Scalar Vector Graphics http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/

SVG Capability http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/SVG-Implementations.htm8#viewer

SWAP, Semantic Web Accessibility Platform http://www.ubaccess.com/swap.html

SWG-A, ISO/IEC JTC1 SWG-A http://www.jtc1access.org/

TBP Talboks-och Punktskrift Biblioteket, Sweden http://www.tpb.se/

Telematics Trust (Telematics Course Development Fund) http://www.telematics.org.au/

testlab is a european http://www.svb.nl/project/testlab/testlab.htm

TextHelp Systems Inc. http://www.texthelp.com/

The Library of Congress National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLS). The Union Catalogue (BPHP) and the file of In-Process Publications (BPHI) can both be searched via the NLS website (see http://lcweb.loc.gov/nls/).

TILE, The Inclusive Learning Exchange http://www.barrierfree.ca/tile/

Topic Maps http://www.topicmaps.org/

TRACE http://www.trace.wisc.edu

UAAG, World Wide Web Consortium WAI's User Agent Accessibility Guidelines http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-USERAGENT/

ubAccess http://www.ubaccess.com/

UML, Unified Modeling Language http://www.uml.org/ (Object Management Group (OMG). “The Unified Modeling Language”, 2006. Available:

UN Enable http://www.un.org/disabilities/

University of Toronto, http://www.utoronto.ca/

URI, Universal Resource Identifier http://labs.apache.org/webarch/uri/

Victorian Education Channel http://www.education.vic.gov.au/

VISUCAT http://www.cnib.ca/library/visunet/

VOD Video on Demand http://www.abc.net.au/vod/news/

W3C, World Wide Web Consortium, http://www.w3c.org/

WAI, World Wide Web Consortium's Web Accessibility Initiative http://www.w3c.org/WAI/

WAI-AGE http://www.w3.org/WAI/WAI-AGE/

WayBackMachine http://www.archive.org/

WCAG, Chisholm, W., Vanderheiden, G. and Jacobs, I. (1999). Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Version 1.0 http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/

WCAG-1, Chisholm, W., Vanderheiden, G. and Jacobs, I. (1999). Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Version 1.0 http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/

WCAG-2 Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Version 2.0 Caldwell, B., Chisholm, W., Vanderheiden, G. and White, J. (2004). http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/

WCAG WG http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/

Web-4-All http://web4all.ca/

WebCite http://www.webcitation.org/

WGBH/NCAM, The Carl and Ruth Shapiro Family National Center for Accessible Media http://ncam.wgbh.org/

Webby award winners http://www.webbyawards.com/

WG7, Working Group 7 of ISO JTC1 SC36, Learning, Education and Training http://jtc1sc36.org/ or http://www.iso.org/iso/en/stdsdevelopment/tc/tclist/TechnicalCommitteeDetailPage.TechnicalCommitteeDetail?COMMID=4997

WHO, World Health Organisation http://www.who.int/classifications/icf/en/index.html

wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/

WSG, Web Standards Group http://webstandardsgroup.org/

WSIS World Summit on the Information Society http://www.itu.int/wsis/

XML, World Wide Web Consortium's Extensible Markup Language (http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml/)

 

Glossary of terms

accessibility
a successful matching of information and communications to a user's needs and preferences to enable the user to interact with and perceive the intellectual content of the information or communications. This includes being able to use whatever assistive technologies or devices that are reasonably involved in the situation and that conform to suitably chosen standards.
 
disabilities
people with ...
inclusive
doing what is reasonably required to ensure accessibility for the maximum number of people individually
metadata

 from ... 1.3 of AGLS Metadata revision of usage guide....(check email from SA and Agnes)
“Metadata is just a new term for something that has been around for as long as humans have been writing. It is the Internet-age term for information that librarians traditionally have put into catalogues and archivists into archival control systems. The term ‘meta’ comes from a Greek word that denotes ‘alongside, with, after, next’. More recent Latin and English usage would employ ‘meta’ to denote something transcendental, or beyond nature. Metadata, then, can be thought of as data about other data. Although there are many varied uses for metadata, the term is commonly used to refer to descriptive information about online resources, generally called ‘resource discovery metadata’.

Resource discovery metadata is information in a structured format that describes a resource or a collection of resources. A metadata record, then, consists of a set of properties, or elements, which characterise resources and which are used to describe a resource. For example, a metadata system common in libraries – the library catalogue – contains a set of metadata records with elements that describe a book or other library item: author, title, date of creation or publication, subject coverage, and the call number specifying location of the item on the shelf.”

resources
things that incl services and objects,
the Web 1.0
digital information and communication - including information that points or provides pointers to non-digital information
the Web 2.0
the Web 3.0

United Nations Convention for People with Disabilities, Article 2 Definitions

For the purposes of the present Convention:

"Communication" includes languages, display of text, Braille, tactile communication, large print, accessible multimedia as well as written, audio, plain-language, human-reader and augmentative and alternative modes, means and formats of communication, including accessible information and communication technology;

"Language" includes spoken and signed languages and other forms of non spoken languages;

"Discrimination on the basis of disability" means any distinction, exclusion or restriction on the basis of disability which has the purpose or effect of impairing or nullifying the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal basis with others, of all human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural, civil or any other field. It includes all forms of discrimination, including denial of reasonable accommodation;

"Reasonable accommodation" means necessary and appropriate modification and adjustments not imposing a disproportionate or undue burden, where needed in a particular case, to ensure to persons with disabilities the enjoyment or exercise on an equal basis with others of all human rights and fundamental freedoms;

"Universal design" means the design of products, environments, programmes and services to be usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialized design. "Universal design" shall not exclude assistive devices for particular groups of persons with disabilities where this is needed (UN, 2006).

 

Relevant Accessibility Organisations

While there are many organisations related to accessibility, too many to even name, there are some organisations that have played a significant role in shaping the Web since its inception. Some of these will be identified here as they usually also provide many online resources and any understanding of the 'literature' of accessibility of the Web or metadata relating to it necessarily relies on familiarity with the work of these organisations.

WAI

W3C's approach has evolved over time but it is currently understood as promoting 'universal design'. This idea was fundamental to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 [WCAG-1] and is maintained for the forthcoming Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 [WCAG-2] guidelines for the creation of content for the Web. The content guidelines are complemented by guidelines for authoring tools that reinforce the principles in the content guidelines and W3C also offers guidelines for browser developers. Significantly, the guidelines are also implemented by W3C in its own work via the Protocols and Formats Working Group who monitor all W3C developments from an accessibility perspective.

W3C entered the accessibility field at the instigation of its director and especially the W3C lead for Society and Technology at the time, Professor James Miller, shortly after the Web started to take a significant place in the information world. W3C established a new activity known as the Web Accessibility Initiative with funding from international sources. From the beginning, although W3C is essentially a members' consortium, in the case of the WAI, all activities are undertaken openly (all mailing lists etc are open to the public all the time) and experts depend upon input from many sources for their work.

The W3C/WAI activity has done more than develop standards over the years through its fairly aggressive outreach program. It publishes a range of materials that aim to help those concerned with accessibility to work on accessibility in their context.

TRACE

The Trace Research & Development Center is a part of the College of Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Founded in 1971, Trace has been a pioneer in the field of technology and disability.

Trace Center Mission Statement:

To prevent the barriers and capitalize on the opportunities presented by current and emerging information and telecommunication technologies, in order to create a world that is as accessible and usable as possible for as many people as possible. ...

Trace developed the first set of accessibility guidelines for Web content, as well as the Unified Web Access Guidelines, which became the basis for the World Wide Web Consortium's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 [TRACE].

Wendy Chisholm, who originally worked at TRACE was a leading staff member of WAI for many years and author of a number of the accessibility guidelines and other documents.

ATRC

The Adaptive Technology Resource Centre is at the University of Toronto. It advances information technology that is accessible to all through research, development, education, proactive design consultation and direct service. The Director of ATRC, Professor Jutta Treviranus, has been significant in the standards work in many fora and the group has contributed the main work on the ATAG. They are also largely responsible for initiating the work for the AccessForAll approach to accessibility and the technical development associated with it.

WGBH/NCAM

The Carl and Ruth Shapiro Family National Center for Accessible Media is part of the WGBH, one of the bigger public broadcast media companies in the USA. Henry Becton, Jr., President of WGBH, is quoted on the WGBH Web site as saying that:

WGBH productions are seen and heard across the United States and Canada. In fact, we produce more of the PBS prime-time and Web lineup than any other station. Home video and podcasts, teaching tools for schools and home-schooling, services for people with hearing or vision impairments ... we're always looking for new ways to serve you! (WGBH About, 2007)

With respect to people with disabilities, the site offers the following:

People who are deaf, hard-of-hearing, blind, or visually impaired like to watch television as much as anyone else. It just wasn't all that useful for them ... until WGBH invented TV captioning and video descriptions.
Public television was first to open these doors. WGBH is working to bring media access to all of television, as well as to the Web, movie theaters, and more (WGBH Access, 2007).

NCAM is a major vehicle for these activities within the media context and its Research Director, Madeleine Rothberg, has been a significant researcher and author in the work that supports AccessForAll in a range of such contexts.

 

Relevant Standards Organisations

In addition to organisations that have been involved in the research and development that have led to the AccessForAll approach and standards, there have been the standards bodies themselves that have not only published standards but also initiated work that has made the standards' development possible. In many cases, standards are determined by 'standards' bodies that are, as in the case of the International Organisation for Standardization [ISO], federations of bodies that ultimately have the power to make laws with respect to the specifications.

W3C's role in the standards world is often described as different from, say, the role of ISO because of the structure of the organisation and also the processes used to develop specifications for recommendation (de facto standards). W3C membership is open to any organisation and tiered so that larger more financial organisations contribute a lot more funding than smaller or not-for-profit ones. The work processes are defined by the W3C so that working groups are open and consult widely and prepare documents which are voted on by members and then recommended, or otherwise, by the Director of the W3C, Sir Tim Berners-Lee. They are published as recommendations but usually referred to as standards and certainly, in the case of the accessibility guidelines, are de facto standards. In many countries, including Australia, they have been adopted into local laws in one way or another.

ISO

ISO collaborates with its partners, the International Electrotechnical Commission [IEC] and the International Telecommunication Union [ITU-T], particularly in the field of information and communication technology international standardization.

ISO makes clear on their Web site, that it is

a global network that identifies what International Standards are required by business, government and society, develops them in partnership with the sectors that will put them to use, adopts them by transparent procedures based on national input and delivers them to be implemented worldwide (ISO in brief, 2006).

ISO federates 157 national standards bodies from around the world. ISO members appoint national delegations to standards committees. In all, there are some 50,000 experts contributing annually to the work of the Organization. When ISO International Standards are published, they are available to be adopted as national standards by ISO members and translated into a range of languages.

The Joint Technical Committee 1 of ISO/IEC is for standardization in the field of information technology. At the beginning of April 2007, it had 2068 published ISO standards related to the Technical Committee and its Sub-Committees; 2068; 538 published ISO standards under its direct responsibility; 31 participating countries; 44 observer countries; at least 14 other ISO and IEC committees and at least 22 international organizations in liaison (JTC1, 2007).

JTC1 SC36 WG7 is the working group for Culture, Language and Human-functioning Activities within the Sub-Committee 36 for IT for Learning Education and Training. It is this working group that has developed the AccessForAll standards for ISO. Co-editors for these standards come from Australia (Liddy Nevile), Canada (Jutta Treviranus) and the United Kingdom (Andy Heath), but there have been major contributions from others in the form of reviews, suggestions, and discussion and support.

IMS

The IMS Global Learning Consortium [IMS] describes itself as having more than 50 Contributing Members and affiliates from every sector of the global learning community. They include hardware and software vendors, educational institutions, publishers, government agencies, systems integrators, multimedia content providers, and other consortia. IMS claims to provide "a neutral forum in which members work together to advocate the use of technology to support and transform education and learning" (IMS, 2007).

A joint project between WGBH/NCAM and IMS initiated the work on AccessForAll with a Specifications for Accessible Learning Technologies [SALT] Grant in December 2000. Anastasia Cheetham, Andy Heath, Jutta Treviranus, Liddy Nevile, Madeleine Rothberg, Martyn Cooper and David Wienkauf were particularly prominent in this work.

DCMI

The Web site describes the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative as

an open organization engaged in the development of interoperable online metadata standards that support a broad range of purposes and business models. DCMI's activities include work on architecture and modeling, discussions and collaborative work in DCMI Communities and DCMI Task Groups, annual conferences and workshops, standards liaison, and educational efforts to promote widespread acceptance of metadata standards and practices (DCMI, 2007).

The DCMI Accessibility Community has been working formally on Dublin Core metadata for accessibility purposes since 2001. While the early work focused on how metadata might be used to make explicit the characteristics of resources as they related to the W3C content guidelines, this goal has been realised in the AccessForAll work. The DCMI Accessibility Community has been working in close collaboration with the IMS and ISO efforts but it has engaged the metadata community, and therefore those working primarily in a wider context than education, especially including government and libraries. The author has been chairperson of the DCMI Accessibility community [DCMI Access WG?] since its inception.

CEN

The European Committee for Standardization, was founded in 1961 by the national standards bodies in the European Economic Community and European Free Trade Association countries. CEN is a forum for the development of voluntary technical standards to promote free trade, the safety of workers and consumers, interoperability of networks, environmental protection, exploitation of research and development programmes, and public procurement (CEN, 2007).

A number of CEN committees have been involved in the development of AccessForAll, either in the form of contributed funding as for the MMI-DC, or in their independent review of the development of AccessForAll and how it will work in their context if it is adopted by the other standards bodies. Significant in this work have been Martyn Cooper, Martin Ford, Andy Heath, and Liddy Nevile who have all worked on CEN projects in recent years. The context for this work has included but not been limited to education.

Cancore, CETIS, AGLS, etc

There are a number of other standards bodies or regional associations that have considered the work in depth and contributed in some way. In fact, in early 2007, IMS versions of the specifications had been downloaded 28,082 times and the related guidelines more than 176,505 times. (Rothberg, 2007) CanCore has published the CanCore Guidelines for the "Access for All" Digital Resource Description Metadata Elements (Friesen, 2006) following an interview with Jutta Treviranus in which she discusses the specifications (Friesen, 2005).

The Centre for Educational Technology and Interoperability Standards [CETIS] in the UK provides a national research and development service to UK Higher and Post-16 Education sectors, funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee. CETIS has published some summary documents about the IMS AccMD, IMS AccLIP and IMS Guidelines.

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