Access For All metadata in OER Commons

[Colin Clark]

Hi Anastasia,

Excellent summary! I agree that the schema.org approach is preferable, despite its drawbacks. In the end, I suspect it will have a higher likelihood of eventually being indexed by search engines (which is what we want), and the nature of the AccessForAll DRD metadata is well-suited to the use of itemscope and the meta tag.

I think this work will become particularly interesting when we are able to blend algorithmically-derived and user-gathered metadata into a resource seamlessly (and usably). This is a good first step. Already, the work you've done should be enough to help enable a search engine or resource browser to filter out content that might be less suitable for a user's needs or to highlight content that is especially well suited.

Thanks for looking into this,

Colin

On 2012-04-03, at 9:34 AM, Cheetham, Anastasia wrote:

> In considering how we're going to add Access For All metadata to OERs authored using the OER Commons authoring tool, I've taken a look at microformats and schema.org microdata. I've drafted wiki pages describing how these two options might be used:
> 
> schema.org microdata:
> 	http://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/Proposal+-+Access+For+All+Properties+for+schema.org+Classes
> 
> microformats:
> 	http://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/Proposal+-+Access+For+All+microformat
> 
> The microformat option looks tidier and simpler on the surface (it's strictly classnames added to HTML elements, whereas the schema.org approach requires additional markup), but on closer examination I think the schema.org approach provides a better solution (notes on the wiki pages should help elaborate on why). I look forward to hearing other thoughts.
> 
> These are just drafts, and I would really love it if we could pick this apart and revise and refine.

---
Colin Clark
Technical Lead, Fluid Project
http://fluidproject.org