Accessibility Commons

A shared metadata repository and schema proposed in 2008 by IBM, the University of Washington, Stony Brook University, and the University of Manchester to let accessibility-remediation research projects publish and reuse externally authored fixes for inaccessible web content. An Accessibility Commons record describes which URIs and DOM elements it applies to, any conditions, and the semantic fix itself (alternative text, ARIA attributes, landmark designation, and so on). Client tools such as Social Accessibility, HearSay, and aiBrowser retrieve records over HTTP to patch a page at render time without modifying the source site. Accessibility Commons is an early example of the federated, crowdsourced remediation model now seen in many third-party accessibility overlays and assistant tools.