Earlier I asked about alternative media could be provided for a11y use. Brian Smith suggested 3 alternatives:
1) The media could have alternatives embedded 2) There could be n number of links in the feed to alternatives, each with a new rel value, e.g. rel="large-print", rel="blind", rel="deaf", rel="transcript", rel="captioned". 3) Put alternative text in the atom:summary field. Option 1, using something like SMIL (or Flash or Quicktime or some format that supports embedding), is a good solution, but totally separate forms of content might be preferable for some publishers. Option 2 might not be acceptable since it seems like this community feels it's best to not have too many possible values for rel. Option 3 would be OK for a fairly short description but wouldn't be suitable for alternative media Most a11y architectures provide for a short description like the title, a longer description like the summary, and then the content itself. Often the title and summary will be good enough. But often an alternative file is needed. I can think of these ways to provide the alternatives: 1) Option 2 above, i.e. links with new rel values 2) Use n links with rel="related" and let the reader sort it out via the MIME type. 3) Handle the whole thing inside the content element with some form of foreign XML. Does anyone have initial thoughts on those three options? I'm looking into application to Atom of a system developed by the IMS Global Learning Consortium called Access For All. It's standardized both by IMS/GLC and ISO/IEC. It provides for users needs and preferences to be defined via one spec and media meta data to be defined in a companion spec. Systems (non-Atom based) exist that use these two specs and match the user preferences to the meta data choosing the appropriate alternative resource based on the user capabilities. The handling of the user preferences and the matching would have to be in a feed reader or a mashup handler. The media (or links to the media) and resource meta data would have to be passed through Atom to the feed reader or mashup client. Based on that short description does anyone have a feeling how to best handle the transmittal of the metadata and media? I will be meeting with someone that's implemented Access For All to understand how this is done in a system called TILE, "The Inclusive Learning Exchange". See http://inclusivelearning.ca/ Hopefully this will help me understand better how A4A could be applied in an Atom environment. Some links: A4A specs from IMS/GLC: The preferences spec is call AccLIP (Learner Info Package), the resource meta data spec is called AccMD http://www.imsglobal.org/accessibility/index.html ISO equivalents: The preferences spec is called PNP (Personal Needs and Preferences) an the meta data spec is called DRD (Digital Resource Description) Overview: http://jtc1sc36.org/doc/36N1139.pdf PNP: http://jtc1sc36.org/doc/36N1140.pdf DRD: http://jtc1sc36.org/doc/36N1141.pdf Pete Brunet IBM Accessibility Architecture and Development 11501 Burnet Road, MS 9022E004, Austin, TX 78758 Voice: (512) 838-4594, Cell: (512) 689-4155 Ionosphere: WS4G
