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ARM (Accessibility Remediation Metadata) Working Group

Many books, articles, videos, and other resources are often inaccessible or not sufficiently accessible to people with perceptual, cognitive, physical, or other disabilities. Schools, colleges, and universities are typically required by law to provide accessible versions of resources that students need. Similarly, government documents and other resources in the United States and elsewhere are required to be accessible. Unfortunately, most published resources are not yet provided by their publishers in fully accessible forms. This requires what is known as remediation: acquiring a publication in some available format and altering it to make it accessible, typically to a single individual needing a particular type of remediation. 

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation-funded project, "FRAME: Federating Repositories of Accessible Materials for Education," was formed to eliminate redundant work and facilitate the sharing of remediated resources. As no standard metadata describing the process and results of remediation for accessibility in sufficient detail existed, the FRAME metadata model was developed to enable both discovery and deposit functions. 

The Accessibility Remediation Metadata (ARM) Working Group has been established to extend and refine the FRAME metadata model to meet the needs of the broader accessibility community. The group began work in January 2024.

Documents

Committee Roster

Co-chairs

J. Stephen Downie

Professor and Associate Dean for Research, Graduate School of Library and Information Science
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Jacob Jett

Research Librarian
Association of State Floodplain Managers

Members

Will Awad

Director of Digital Accessibility
Newgen KnowledgeWorks

Jamie Axelrod

Director, Disability Resources
Northern Arizona University

Ravit David

Distinctive Collections Librarian, Scholars Portal
University of Toronto Libraries

Darrin Evans

Director, Virtual Learning Community
Wake Technical Community College

Dawn Evans

AccessText Network Coordinator
Georgia Institute of Technology

George Kerscher

Chief Innovations Officer, DAISY Consortium
Senior Officer, Global Literacy, Benetech

Elaine Ober

Director of Accessibility Consulting Programs
Tech for All Consulting

Chris Oliver

Head, Resource Description and Metadata Services
University of Ottawa

Korey Singleton

Deputy ADA Coordinator for Accessibility and ATI Manager
George Mason University

Damita Snow

Director, Accessibility & Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Strategy, Publications and Standards
American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE)

Richard Urban

Senior Program & Engagement Officer, OCLC Research
OCLC

Evan Yamanishi

Vice President, Director of Engineering & Accessibility
W.W. Norton

James Yanchak

Production Technologies Manager
Taylor & Francis Group