NISO’s Draft Accessibility Remediation Metadata (ARM) Standard Now Open for Public Comment
Baltimore, Maryland | September 24, 2026: The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) announced today that its draft Accessibility Remediation Metadata (ARM) standard is now available for public comment through November 9, 2026, at the project web page: https://www.niso.org/standards-committees/arm.
Many resources, including books and articles, are inaccessible for individuals with disabilities, despite legal requirements for educational institutions and government documents to provide accessible versions. Most published materials lack full accessibility, necessitating remediation to adapt them for individual needs. Frequently, this kind of remediation work is duplicated at individual institutions because there is no existing framework within which they can easily share their remediation efforts.
The FRAME project and its resulting EMMA platform (Educational Materials Made Accessible), funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, aimed to reduce redundant work and promote sharing of remediated resources by creating a metadata model for describing the remediation process in detail. The Accessibility Remediation Metadata (ARM) Working Group was established to extend, refine, and standardize the EMMA metadata model to meet the needs of the broader accessibility community.
“Accessibility requirements vary significantly among people with disabilities. For example, a blind user may require mathematical content encoded in MathML and long descriptions for complex images. A person with dyslexia may benefit from a reflowable EPUB that supports font customization,” said Bill Kasdorf, Consultant and ARM Working Group Co-Chair. “ARM metadata enables these features to be described in detail, making it easier for individuals and institutions to locate resources that meet a particular individual’s requirements–a common need in libraries and college classes.”
“ARM also captures relevant bibliographic and technical information using a standardized vocabulary that is both human-readable and machine-processable,” added Jacob Jett, Research Librarian at the Association of State Floodplain Managers and Working Group Co-Chair. “This extension of the EMMA metadata model will refine the exchange of information on a resource’s accessibility and help lay a foundation for sharing the results of remediation efforts.”
“We’re excited to share this draft with the community,” said J. Stephen Downie, Professor and Executive Associate Dean at the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Working Group Co-Chair. “Additional feedback will help ensure that ARM meets a broad range of needs, which in turn will support wider adoption once the new standard is finalized.”
“We truly appreciate the dedication of Bill, Jacob, Stephen, and all members of the Working Group for their efforts in creating the draft of the NISO ARM standard,” said Keondra Bailey, NISO Standards Program Manager. “We look forward to collaborating with them following the public comment period to evaluate and integrate community feedback, facilitating the completion of the ANSI/NISO standardization process.”
The draft ARM standard is available for public comment through November 9, 2026: https://www.niso.org/standards-committees/arm
