A Role for Metadata in Promoting Accessibility Liddy Nevile La Trobe University Australia

Summary The Web for all people Definition of accessibility Accessibility standards/laws Communities working on accessibility Metadata for accessibility Current state of development

The Web for every One The range of benefits: Knowledge/Science/… Tele-health Tele-education Ecological Equity --> telecommunications access for all --> content and services access for all

Definition of accessibility Scenario 1 –Rashid is driving his new Porsche to Agra on Valentine’s Day. He realises that he has not brought flowers and wants to know where he can collect some roses on his way. “Google” knows, but Rashid cannot take his eyes off the road to check the Web. His on-board computer is rendered useless.

Definition of accessibility Scenario 2 –Indira is a tele-education student studying mathematics. Her specialisation is continuous fractions. She is finishing her doctoral thesis. Her professor is in Delhi. Indira lives in Sakristi with her parents. Indira is deaf/blind and depends upon her computer and Braille device to communicate.

Definition of accessibility Accessibility is about ‘independence’, access despite changes in: –Devices (desktop, laptop, palm, phone..) –Contexts (quiet, noisy, public, …) –Modalities (seeing, hearing, touching,..) –Abilities (illiterate, dyslexic, dysnumeric, …) –Languages –Cultures

Definition of accessibility In summary, accessibility is about content and services that are developed once and yet available to all devices (and people, including those using assistive technologies) i.e. Re-usable multi-media content in forms that comply with W3C standards for accessibility

Accessibility standards/laws European Economic Community –Requirements for equity for people with disabilities, esp. in e-government, e-education,... U.S.A. –Requirements for government procurement (s. 508) - competitive advantage Australia –Requirement for lack of discrimination (Disabilities Discrimination Act - Common Law interpretation)

Accessibility standards/laws India –A “right to information” Differences (in enforcement): –EU - a right –USA - a constraint –Australia - a common law protection –India - a common law right

‘accessibility’ Communities W3C and W3C WAI (Web Content Accessibility Initiative) –Guidelines for authors, authoring tools and user agent developers EuroAccessibility –Characteristics of accessibility (based on WCAG) Disability communities, advocacy communities, digital library initiatives, ….

Accessibility Metadata WGs Dublin Core Metadata Initiative International Committee Technology Standards (INCITS V2) IMS Global Learning Consortium and W3C’s Evaluation and Reporting Language (EARL) Working Group

User profiling WebForAll technology (Industry Canada) –smart card to manage hardware/software AccessForAll profile (IMS et al.) –Control –Display –Content

Control needs and preferences

User profiling WebForAll technology (Industry Canada) –smart card to manage hardware/software AccessForAll profile (IMS et al.) –Control –Display –Content AccessForAllAlways (CEN MMI-DC) - include language and culture

Content discovery/repair User profiles Web services Metadata repository search engine etc.. Content repository Web server etc..

Technical aspects of access –Content from HTML to XML (W3C) –Use accessible technologies (SVG, SMIL, i18n,...) –Migrate metadata ( HTML to XML to RDF) –Separate content & presentation (CSS, XSLT,...) –Describe user in metadata => Use [content + presentation + user] metadata to provide access

State of development W3C WAI guidelines –WCAG, ATAG, UAAG, DI, CSS, EARL, XSLT, SMIL, SVG, …. –XAG DCMI, IMS etc… –AccessForAll profile AccessibilityMetadata –30th April 2004 in Brussels

Thank you