Accessibility metadata proposal submitted to Schema.org

[Cheetham, Anastasia]

This week, a proposal for an accessibility metadata schema was submitted to Schema.org:

    http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-vocabs/2013Apr/0028.html

Schema.org was created by a consortium of large search engines (including Google, Yahoo, etc.) as a collection of schemas that can be used to add semantic information to content and improve search results. The inclusion of accessibility metadata in the Schema.org collection would help people to easily find content that meets their individual needs and preferences.

The working group that drafted the proposal was spearheaded by Benetech (the makers of Bookshare, the world's largest accessible digital library of scanned material) and includes members from the IMS Accessibility working group, LRMI, and other accessibility experts. The proposed properties are based on the IMS AccessForAll specification. You can find the proposed schema, examples and other information at the project website:

    http://a11ymetadata.org/

The working group encourages feedback on this proposal as we bring it through the schema.org process. To participate in the discussion, please join the mailing list:

    https://groups.google.com/group/a11y-metadata-project

Discussions will also be carried out on the W3C Public Vocabs list:

    http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-vocabs/

-- 
Anastasia Cheetham     Inclusive Design Research Centre
acheetham at ocadu.ca           Inclusive Design Institute
                                        OCAD University