HOME ABOUT TILE TOOLS AND RESOURCES PARTNERS AND COMMUNITY PROJECT INFORMATION
Open Specifications and Standards - National and International Interoperability
Several standards bodies look to the project partners to propose specifications for accessible e-learning. Jutta Treviranus was the Chair of the IMS Global Learning Consortium Accessibility for Learner Information Package (ACCLIP) Working Group, and is currently Co-Chair of the Accessibility Profile Working Group. She has undertaken the task of drafting extensions to the Learner Information Package Specification and the MetaData Specification to accommodate accessible e-learning. As a result, the extension to the IMS Learner Information Package called the AccessForAll element (aka ACCLIP) has been adopted as an IMS recommendation. It was the first IMS specification to be adopted without negative votes or requests for revisions. At the same time, it became clear that the IMS Learning Design specification does not enable markup of the kind required by TILE despite the fact that it is a stated goal of the LD working group and specification. Members of the LD working group and TILE continue to work together to address this. Work on extensions to the IMS Metadata specifications to accommodate accessibility requirements are productive and ongoing.
To insure that this work is reflected in other internationally adopted specifications Jutta is also a member of the Dublin Core Accessibility Working Group and the Chair of the W3C Authoring Tool Working Group. Discussions are underway with the developers of CanCore to either inherit or proactively adopt the accessibility extensions to IMS Metadata specifications. The ATRC is consulting to implementers of SCORM regarding the SCORM API and accessibility. Discussions are also underway with the developers of EML regarding accessibility and EML. The proposed project will not only adhere to appropriate international standards and interoperability specifications such as IMS, IEEE LOM, Dublin Core, and CanCore, it will serve to guide the extensions of these standards.
CANARIE played a critical role in the development of the World Wide Web Consortium, Web Accessibility Standards. The impetus to create an accessibility initiative within the W3C was driven by a project led by SoftQuad in partnership with the ATRC and funded by CANARIE. The W3C Web Accessibility guidelines now form the basis for legislation and regulations in at least 3 continents, including the US Rehab 508, Australian Human Rights legislation, the Barrierfree Europe initiative and Canada's Common Look and Feel. Continued support of a similar initiative in e-learning will have far reaching effects. Key international specification and standards bodies are receptive and expectant of direction from the project partners regarding accessible e-learning.