New and Emerging Specs & Standards (January 2026)
ISO/IEC 22121-3:2025 — Information technology — Virtual keyboards user interfaces
Part 3: Virtual keyboards interactions
Technical Committee: ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 35
“This document provides guidelines on assistive technologies and functionalities that are to be included in accessible virtual keyboards. This document underlines which kinds of interaction modes can be embedded, which kinds of assistive technologies can be easily bound to virtual keyboards, and which kinds of functionalities are to be taken into account within virtual keyboards. This document does not apply to physical keyboards that use real physical keys or adaptable keys, which can be customized to user needs, for example with LCD display.”
ISO/TR 14872:2025 — Health informatics — Identification of medicinal products — Core principles for maintenance of identifiers and terms
Technical Committee: ISO/TC 215
“This document describes the core principles for supporting the development, implementation and ongoing maintenance of IDMP identifiers and terminologies. This document provides considerations for the evaluation and/or design when considering current or future operations and service level agreements for systems and terminology support services in conformity with IDMP.”
ISO 9241-161:2025 — Ergonomics of human-system interaction Part 161: Visual user-interface elements
Technical Committee: ISO/TC 159/SC 4
“This document specifies requirements and provides recommendations for the selection, usage and dependencies of visual user-interface elements and their application. This document is concerned with visual software components of interactive systems to make human-system interaction usable. This document is applicable regardless of a fixed, portable or mobile interactive system, or cross-device use. It does not provide detailed coverage of the methods and techniques required for design of visual user-interface elements. This document does not address implementation (e.g. graphical design of elements) and interaction details for specific input methods or technologies. It does not cover decorative user-interface elements that are intended to address solely aesthetic (hedonic) qualities in the user interface e.g. background images.”
ISO 9241-171:2025 — Ergonomics of human-system interaction Part 171: Software accessibility
Technical Committee: ISO/TC 159/SC 4
“This document specifies requirements and gives guidelines for designing accessible software for people with the widest range of physical, sensory and cognitive abilities, including those who are temporarily or situationally disabled, and the elderly. It addresses software considerations for accessibility that complement general design for usability as addressed by parts of the ISO 9241 series, especially ISO 9241-11 and ISO 9241-210. This document is applicable to the accessibility of interactive systems. It addresses a wide range of software (e.g. home, mobile, office, web, learning support and library systems). It promotes the increased usability of systems for a wider range of users in the widest range of contexts of use. This document does not apply to the behaviour of, or requirements for, assistive technologies (including assistive software), but it does address the use of assistive technologies as an integrated component of interactive systems. It is intended for use by those responsible for the specification, design, development, evaluation and procurement of software platforms and software applications.”
ISO 16642:2025 — Management of terminology resources — Terminological markup framework
Technical Committee: ISO/TC 37/SC 3
“This document specifies a framework for representing data recorded in terminological data collections (TDCs). This framework includes a metamodel and methods for describing specific terminological markup languages (TMLs), exemplified in this document in eXtensible Markup Language (XML). The mechanisms for implementing constraints in a TML are defined, but not the specific constraints for individual TMLs. This document is designed to support the development and use of computer applications for terminological data and the exchange of such data between different applications. This document also defines the conditions that allow the data expressed in one TML to be mapped onto another TML.”
ISO/IEC 4932:2025 — Information Technology — Learning, education and training — Access for All (AfA) metadata for accessibility core properties
Technical Committee: ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 36
“This document specifies a common, interoperable set of extensible properties for the description of resource content, functionality, user needs and preferences, to enable network-supported individualization of resources, services and environments to match the unique needs and preferences of the individual. This document includes all relevant mechanisms for the publication of terminology for such descriptions, including publicly available registries of properties and related metadata resources such as application profiles. This document takes an inclusive approach to individualization, since any user can experience a mismatch of their individual needs and preferences and the content or services delivered; it is not restricted to descriptions related to stereotypical notions of disability. It provides properties for describing access attributes of resources. It does not ascribe medical conditions to such properties (e.g. ‘non-visual’ as a property value does not infer visual disability, as when the user’s eyes are busy watching the road). This document defines a set of core Access for All (AfA) properties that can be used in a digital resource description (DRD), an AfA record, and equally in a stored personal needs and preferences profile, also an AfA record. It also includes how to extend or add a property or its value using an application profile as defined by ISO/IEC 19788-1.”
Group Note Draft: RDF 1.2 Interoperability [W3C]
“The RDF & SPARQL Working Group has published the first draft of a Group Note titled RDF 1.2 Interoperability. The goal of this specification is to provide guidance and good practices to achieve interoperability across different versions or profiles of RDF.”
When Tools Collide: Managing the Clash of Vendor and Internal Toolsets [EDUCAUSE]
“Aligning project management tools between higher education institutions and implementation partners requires early collaboration and negotiation to ensure successful, minimally disruptive technology deployments.”
