Accessibility Remediation Metadata (ARM) Working Group

Accessibility Remediation Metadata (ARM) Draft Now Available for Public Comment

The comment period for the draft standard, NISO Z39.107-202x, Accessibility Remediation Metadata (ARM), is now open from September 24 - November 9, 2026.

You may access the draft document, leave a comment, and view comments received. All feedback will be reviewed and considered by the working group prior to final publication.

Description

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.