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CanCore Access for All Guidelines - Overview
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These contents have been obtained from the CanCore Web site and edited for presentation. Please refer to the CanCore Web site for additional information on terms of use.
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In the arena of e-learning, interoperability suggests the storing, processing and exchanging of instructional content, student records and other kinds of information by different and often divers systems.
Interoperability is also central to understanding the Access4All specifications. These specifications, available from IMS and ISO, enable a similar "interoperation" between computer systems. Simultaneously, they also support a different kind of inter-operation, namely between these systems and their end-users or learners. These standards address and ensure matches between the learner's needs and computer systems; they consider every learner, in a sense, as a potential system, that an external system needs to interoperate. Mismatches, interruptions and other issues in the operation between the learner and these systems become more common as computing and Internet access becomes more portable, flexible and ubiquitous: robbing our vision of the screen in direct sunlight or while driving; depriving us of hearing while working on a flight. Ensuring these barriers to access can be adequately addresses is the focus of the Access4All specifications. Whether short term or permanent, addressing these barriers can make the difference between full access or none at all. In this sense, these Access4All specifications "do not address personal traits, but artifacts of a relationship between the learner and the learning environment or [system of] educational delivery; and "accessibility" becomes the ability of these environments, systems and content to adapt to the needs of all learners.
In considering this adaptability and interoperation there are two "systems" that need to be accounted for and whose successful inter-operation needs to be supported: the learner, on the one hand, and the system or the content that the learner is using, on the other. As a result, Access4All provides one specification for the learner (the ISO "Personal Needs and Preferences Statement" -PNPS-; previously the IMS Learner Information Profile) and a second for the content (as a part of the IMS Learning Object Metadata standard or the IEEE LOM). In matching these specifications, the users needs can be met and, consequently, has access to the content they seek.
The second of these, the LOM standard for educational content, specifies how this content (or "learning objects") are to be described, classified: which age groups and contexts they may be appropriate for, etc. It is in connection with the LOM, of course, that CanCore enters the picture. CanCore's main goal has been to support the implementation of the LOM standard for educational content. CanCore has done this by indicating which elements are important under different circumstances, and by explaining precisely what each element means, and how it is to be implemented technically.
There are 76 of these items or elements in the LOM in total, and CanCore provides guidelines or support for each of these. However, these elements do not describe this learning content in such a way that it can be used with the user's needs or circumstances (in such a way as to support adaptability or interoperability between the learner and the system). The Access4All specification outlines these elements, and defines them in such a way that they can be matched with corresponding information, elements, in the PNPS. The Access4All specification for the LOM is known as "Digital Resource Description (or DRD, formerly the ACCMD or Accessibility Meta-Data.) Having supported the elements of the LOM, and having the provision of access to learning resources as its primary goal, CanCore is consequently also supporting --developing guidelines, examples, implementation advice, etc.-- for Access4All Digital Resource Description.CanCore Accessibility Web Site |
Terms of use
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These contents have been obtained from the CanCore Web site and edited for presentation. Please refer to the CanCore Web site for additional information on terms of use.
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The ISO/IEC "Access for All" Digital Resource Description (ISO/IEC DRD) standard provides a common language for describing digital learning resources to facilitate matching of those resources to learners' accessibility needs and preferences (as defined in ISO/IEC 24751-2). This description is one side of a pair of descriptions used in matching user needs and preferences with education delivery (as described in ISO/IEC 24751-1).
The CanCore Access for All Guidelines document provides developing guidelines, examples, implementation advice, etc., for the ISO/IEC DRD specification. For each DRD element, this documentation provides, as appropriate:- Detailed technical implementation notes that interpret and comment on the significance of the element.
- Vocabulary recommendations
- Text Example
- XML Example
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Terms of use
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These contents have been obtained from the CanCore Web site and edited for presentation. Please refer to the CanCore Web site for additional information on terms of use.
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Title: CanCore Guidelines for the "Access for All" Digital Resource Description Metadata Elements
Release Date: 24 March 2009
Editors: Norm Friesen & Anthony Roberts
The electronic version is available at CanCore "Access for All" Web site. |
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