Rich Schwerdtfeger
Distinguished Engineer, SWG Accessibility Architect/Strategist
Chair, IBM Accessibility Architecture Review Board
blog: http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/dw_blog.jspa?blog=441
"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.", Frost
"Bruce D'Arcus" <> wrote on 03/21/2006 02:12:39 PM:
> Hi Richard,
>
> On Mar 21, 2006, at 2:55 PM, Richard Schwerdtfeger wrote:
>
> > I am on the HTML working group developing XHTML2 and the ODF
> > accessibility subteam.
>
> Oh good!
>
> > I was one of the engineers that developed the role attribute additon.
> > It is not clear we need that at this time. Neither the XHTML 2 or the
> > Dynamic Web Accessibility Specifications are at recommendation phase
> > so we just can't pull in the features through namespaces. For the
> > greatest value I believe the role value would be linked to a taxonomy
> > covering drawings/diagrams. ... but we may find value for it in this
> > or a later release of ODF.
>
> What was interesting to me about "role" was not so much its specifics
> (I"m really not sure whether we could use it), so much as that its
> design reflects consideration of both accessibility and semantic web
> integration, which is now the subject of two of our subcommittees.
>
Interesting. I would like to know more about what your are planning for semantic web integration.
We are also using role to map to a GUI and structural taxonomy in the W3C WAI
PF working group so that we can make DHTML/AJAX type applications accessible.
http://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/roadmap/DHTMLRoadmap030706.html
http://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/GUI/roleTaxonomy-20060221.html
http://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/adaptable/StatesAndProperties-20051106.html
> Those of working on metadata had realized that we'll need one or more
> attributes that link content or styles to metadata descriptions, so
> hence my interest. But the attributes that are a part of RDF/A are
> probably closer to what we'd need.
>
OK. What is the timeline you are looking for in ODF?
> Aside: there's another thing that I really like about XHTML 2.0, which
> is that it has real sectional structures and smarter paragraph
> structures (they can contain lists and other blocks). I realize this is
> a fairly radical break with the existing flat structure of XHTML 1.0
> and ODF, but it does bring with it a variety of benefits, including
> enhancing accessibility (mentioned in the presentation by Pemberton).
> Maybe something worth thinking about for ODF 2.0.
>
> > Is Notes something the TC was going to add to ODF and if so when?
>
> ODF already has what I was asking for, which is some way to indicate
> what in print-oriented formats like ODF are rendered as footnotes or
> endnotes.
I see so you would be interested in marking these as such through the use of role.
>
> Bruce
>
