FAIR Principles

The FAIR Principles are a set of guidelines for making digital data and resources Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable. Developed by an international consortium and published in 2016, they are widely adopted in research, libraries, and cultural heritage institutions. "Accessible" in FAIR means that data and metadata are retrievable by their identifiers using open, standardised protocols — importantly, it includes the provision that metadata remains accessible even when the data itself is not. In digital accessibility practice, FAIR principles complement WCAG: WCAG governs how interfaces serve people with disabilities, while FAIR governs how the underlying data can be discovered and reused across institutional and technical boundaries.