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Standards and accessibility

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Accessibility and metadata

By Vashti Zarach

What is metadata?

  • Metadata is data which describes data, or information about information.
  • Metadata describe the nature and content of web and e-learning resources.
  • Metadata provide invisible descriptive information about resources, including keywords, author, title, subject and so on.
  • Metadata can therefore be used to catalogue and describe resources, and to search for and locate resources.

What is accessibility?

  • Accessibility is about ensuring that websites and online learning resources are accessible to people with disabilities.
  • Accessibility also makes resources more user-friendly for all people, and ensures that people using old or slow browsers and computers, mobile phones, digital TV and PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants) are able to access web sites and learning resources.
  • Site designers and content providers need to consider the accessibility needs of visually impaired people (who use screen readers and refreshable braille displays), hearing impaired people, physically impaired people, and cognitively impaired people.
  • Principles of accessibility include providing a basic text format adhering to web and HTML standards, considering the use of XHTML, providing alternative textual descriptions for images, providing information in alternative media formats (text, audio, visual), presenting information in clear and simple layouts with simple navigation systems, using easily readable text formats and colours, enabling all actions to be completed from the keyboard as well as the mouse, and enabling people to personalise resources according to their preferences.

What is accessible metadata?

  • Metadata which provide information on the accessibility features of a particular resource
  • A resource can then be tagged to indicate the availability of features such as audio content, braille format, subtitles and audio descriptions (for videos), etc.
  • Metadata tags can also indicate the complexity of language level, and the language/s of the resource.

Developing accessibility metadata can improve interoperability (the sharing and exchanging of information).

  • Developing a set of standardised accessibility metadata will enable a variety of people, institutions, search engines, cataloguers, etc, to describe resources using the same tag sets and therefore share and search each other's databases for accessible resources.

Projects involving accessibility and metadata.

REVEAL: The National Database of Accessible Formats.

  • This database is being created to replace the National Union Catalogue of Alternative Formats (NUCAF), which contains information about resources in accessible formats in the UK. NUCAF is currently only accessible to certain institutions at present. The REVEAL database will be a web-based database, accessible and updatable around the UK, and contain information about more resources.
  • The database requires the use of cataloguing information about accessibility features and formats. The library standard for cataloguing is MARC. The NUCAF database currently uses UKMARC 037 to describe tactile format data; the new database will be using MARC21 007 physical description fixed fields. (MARC21 is the combined form of USMARC and CANMARC). This may be of interest to people developing accessible metadata.

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