Accessibility Workshop: Metadata and the Global Public Inclusive Infrastructure
Organizers:
» Liddy Nevile, Chair, DCMI Accessibility Community, Australia
» Gottfried Zimmermann, Media University (HdM), Stuttgart, Germany
» Gregg Vanderheiden, University of Wisconsin-Madison, U.S.A.
Abstract:
This workshop of the « DCMI Accessibility Community » will be co-hosted by Liddy Nevile, in Malaysia, and Drs Gregg Vanderheiden and Gottfried Zimmermann. The workshop organizers will briefly describe work involving metadata standards to enable the matching of resources and services to individuals' needs, including where they need adaptation or alternatives to be usable or a more suitable interface is necessary. « Raising the Floor », the « Global Public Inclusive Infrastructure » and « Cloud4All » projects will be described. Participants will discuss how metadata specialists can help accessibility specialists with this important work. The workshop participants will then be asked to consider some questions that have arisen in the course of this work, including the best way to handle technical issues that require 'serious metadata expertise'.
Ensuring that users of resources and services can engage with the content offered can depend upon many factors, including their context of use, the devices they may be using, abilities of a physical, intellectual or linguistic nature, and more. The United Nations « Convention of the Rights of People with Disabilities » calls for an 'inclusive' information system, mandating what the DCMI Accessibility Community has always sought to achieve: delivery to users of resources and services that satisfy their accessibility needs and preferences. Currently there are major projects in Europe and north America to develop what is to be a public, inclusive information infrastructure, the Global Public Inclusive Infrastructure (GPII) largely available through cloud computing and crowd sourcing. The GPII will depend on metadata in various forms so previous work of the DCMI Community is becoming particularly important and could contribute significantly to this effort as well as benefiting from it.
In this workshop, participants will learn about the GPII, about the work done on DC Accessibility metadata, and how DC Accessibility metadata is relevant. The work requires the expertise of accessibility experts who can gather and interpret the needs and preferences of people with disabilities, in particular, but equally, expertise in metadata. There is considerable work underway for the GPII but those involved are not necessarily experts in the use of metadata.
The DCMI Accessibility Community has been asked to help with this work and invited to participate in the discussions. The community's Chair (Liddy Nevile) is an editor of the emerging ISO/IEC standard for accessibility metadata (replacing Information Technology—Individualized adaptability and accessibility in e-learning, education and training—Part 1: Framework and reference model « ISO/IEC N 24751 »
There are issues such as that a requirement of a user can change according to the circumstances. For example, a fontsize that is suitable during the day may not be big enough at night when the user is tired. Another complication is that the description of the user's needs and preferences for accessibility characteristics of the interfaces and resources they use is not a description of the person, but of an abstract set of requirements they choose to use. These problems will be considered in the workshop and advice sought from DCMI experts.
It is hoped the session will propose a DC-Accessibility Task Group to complement the work of the accessibility experts with expert metadata advice. This Group could work with the collaborative, open Raising the Floor (RtF/GPII/CLOUD4All) working group.
Drs Nevile, Vanderheiden and Zimmermann are three of an extended international group of experts working on a number of projects. They wrestle with concepts of accessibility and how to help those who have disabilities that make using resources especially difficult, in particular. Dr Vanderheiden is an outstanding expert in the field of accessibility. All three worked on the development of the international standard ISO/IEC N24752 which aims to give access to the controls of electronic products using interfaces built on metadata descriptions of user needs. ISO/IEC N24752 aims to provide users with a single, Universal Remote Console. It is complementary to the metadata standard ISO/IEC 24751 on which Dr Nevile has worked extensively. Dr Nevile has been the Chair of the DCMI Accessibility Community since its inception. She has worked with the community to develop metadata terms that could be used or adapted for use by the GPII.
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Gregg Vanderheiden is a professor of Industrial and Biomedical Engineering, and founder and director of Trace R&D Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has worked in technology and disability for more than 39 years and currently directs the NIDRR Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center (RERC) on Universal Interfaces and Information Technology Access, and co-directs the RERC on Telecommunications Access (joint with Gallaudet University). | |
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Gottfried Zimmermann is professor for mobile user interaction at the Media University (HdM) in Stuttgart. He lectures in the areas of Human-Computer Interaction, Accessibility, Usability Engineering, and Mobile Web. His research projects are on the topics of adaptive multi-media eLearning platforms, and the adaptive Web based on user and context profiles. Other activities include research work for the Trace R&D Center, active participation in the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative as invited expert, active participation on international standardization within ISO/IEC JTC1 SC35 and SC36, reviews of research projects for the European Commission as independent expert, and occasional teaching activities at other universities as guest lecturer. |
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Liddy Nevile is well-known to DCMI and is Chair of the Accessibility Community. Liddy is now a retired professor who has been involved in work on accessibility and metadata for about 20 years. She was an early member of the W3C work teams concerned with accessibility and the early W3C work on metadata that led to the development of the Semantic Web. She was also an early member of the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative. In addition to research and academic work, Liddy has experience in planning and building major systems managed by metadata for government and commercial organisations in Australia. Liddy holds B.Juris/LLB; MEd; and a PhD, which was based on how metadata can contribute to solutions to problems of accessibility and inclusivity. | |
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