AfA FAQ
What can I read now to get a sense of how AfA works?
In the short term, anyone who wants to understand how the standard works could refer to the overview document published by IMS. As the AfA standard was based on earlier IMS work, this document can provide the background and help with understanding of the standard. See http://www.imsglobal.org/accessibility/accmdv1p0/imsaccmd_oviewv1p0.html In particular, it may be useful to read starting at Section 2 of that document.
What should I do now?
If you are a resource publisher, you should label your resources! The most basic labeling is to say what accessmode is required to access the intellectual content of the resources. This is necessary so that users can not just find out the format of the reosurce, but if they can access it e.g. when there is text in an image, it would be described as an image although the type might be text. To clarify what is available to a person with accessibility needs, accessmode is necessary. The choices are visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory and textual, auditory, braille, haptic, flashing hazard, sound hazard, ornamental content. While the first four are easy, textual is used to mean not only that the resource uses text but that the text is transformable ie it can be used by a screen reader or converted to Braille. You know if the text is 'textual' by checking against the WCAG Guidelines.
How do I add AfA metadata to a Web resource? (draft answer)
If you want to add the metadata to the resource, complete and put the metadata in the head of the document. The metadata can be expressed in several forms. the simplest being as a meta tag in HTML and the most sophisticated being in RDF, also suitable for inclusion in the head of an HTML document.<link rel="schema.AfA" href="http://purl.oclc.org/NET/AfA.rdf" /> <meta AfA:accessMode content="auditory"> <meta AfA:accessMode content="textual">
which means that there is some content that needs to be heard as well as the content that can be read (including as Braille, by a screenreader, etc...).
or, if you like to be a bit more sophisticated, try
<link rel="schema.AfA" href="http://purl.oclc.org/NET/AfA.rdf" /> <....
and if there is an alternative resource that can be used by people who cannot use the original resource, you could also add
<meta AfA.hasAdaptation="http://www.your-organization.com/documents/wonderful.pdf">
or
<... <...
AfA User Guide
Contents
Overview of AfA What should I do now? Glossary References