It is recommended that this standard interoperate with accessibility-vetted approaches, such as XLinks, XForms and SMIL

Provide an "Informative" annex which would provide information on accessibility features and hooks in the development of assistive technologies. Canada recommends a full review of the standard for Accessibility for future versions of this standard.

Throughout

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Proposed Disposition of DIS 29500 Comment CA-0075 (Modified: 2008-01-13) Agreed. An accessibility Guidelines document has been created by accessibility experts (see below). We propose that a future maintenance group incorporate the final version of this document as an informative Annex. Office Open XML provides a rich infrastructure for creating content that meets the needs of people with disabilities, and enables them to read, create, and edit documents with full access to all of the semantics captured by document creators. In separate responses, we proposed additions to the accessibility capabilities of DIS 29500. (See the resolutions to CA-0069, ECMA-0039, and US-0026 regarding associate content controls and form controls to specific labels; CA-0072, ECMA-0040, and US-0023 regarding navigation order among elements in a presentation slide; US-0022 regarding associate data cells with header cells in a table; and US-0025 regarding associate accessibility information with frames and framesets). Accessibility Review and Guidelines for DIS 29500 Accessibility experts reviewed DIS 29500, and created a document, “Accessibility Guidelines for DIS 29500″ ( http://www.openxmldeveloper.org/articles/OpenXMLAccessibilityGuidelines.aspx ). Here are some extracts from these guidelines: Abstract This document is a guide for applications that support DIS 29500 (ECMA-376, Office Open XML) specification with the goal of encouraging the creation of accessible Office Open XML documents. Office Open XML provides a rich infrastructure for creating content that meets the needs of people with disabilities. This document must be followed in order to ensure Office Open XML implementations are consistent with respect to their support for accessibility at both at the application and output level. Status and Contributors This document was authored and reviewed by the following members of the accessibility community: Markus Gylling ­ Technical Development Coordinator DAISY Consortium Swedish Library of Talking Books and Braille Board Member, National Information Standards Organization Selected Papers ­ ANSI/NISO Z39.86-2005 “Specifications for the Digital Talking Book”, Markus Gylling , the DAISY Consortium and the Swedish Library of Talking Books and Braille - http://www.daisy.org/z3986/2005/Z3986 George Kerscher ­ Secretary General DAISY Consortium George chaired the DAISY/NISO Standards Committee. US National File Format Technical Panel for Secretary of Education 2004 Harry Murphy Catalyst Award Winner 2001 Dayton Forman Award 1998 US News and World Report Innovator of the Year Selected Papers o " Implications of Digital Talking Books and Beyond ", George Kerscher. National Federation of the Blind presentation 1999. See http://www.nfb.oprg/bm00/bm0001/bm000114.htm o " Beyond Gutenberg ", Janina Sajka and George Kerscher, 2000, American Foundation for the Blind. See http://www.afb.org/ebook.html Reed Shaffner ­ Accessibility Product Manager, Microsoft Office Project Director (with Sonata Software Limited and Daisy Consortium) of the Office Open XML to DAISY Translator at http://sourceforge.net/projects/openxml-daisy Dana Simberkoff ­ Vice President, HiSoftware® (Accessibility, Regulatory Compliance) Vice President of HiSoftware®, a leading provider of software and services that test, repair, monitor and enforce audited Web content, quality, and regulatory compliance. HiSoftware’s accessibility solutions include AccMonitorTM, AccRepair, AccVerify, Hi-Caption and compliance software designed to ensure that various technologies comply with accessible technology needs. Rob Sinclair ­ Group Program Manager, Microsoft Accessibility Business Unit Architect, Microsoft User Interface (UI) Automation Robert B. Yonaitis, CTO and Founder HiSoftware® (Accessibility, Regulatory Compliance) Yonaitis’ role at HiSoftware involves technology direction, product architecture, partner development, and standards development. HiSoftware is a leading provider of software and services that test, repair, monitor and enforce audited Web content, quality, and regulatory compliance. His work led to HiSoftware being chosen by the National Multiple Sclerosis Society and the Engineering Society of Detroit as the 2003 da Vinci Award for Electronics and Information Technology Selected Publications: Understanding Accessibility - 2002, 2007. ISBN - 1-930616-03-1 (The authors indicated that they will welcome additional feedback and comments.) DAISY and Office Open XML In addition to the support described above, considerable work has been done to ensure that Office Open XML can be translated into other formats. Specifically, a translator project has been initiated on SOURCEFORGE.net®, that will allow for the translation of Office Open XML to the DAISY DTBook format. The architecture was created in a way that allows for the translator to be implemented easily across various operating systems and applications. More information on this project can be found at at http://sourceforge.net/projects/openxml-daisy . Regarding the desire to harmonize the specification with existing interoperable technologies, we definitely agree that it is important for a standard to make use of existing standards whenever possible; Office Open XML makes use of many existing standards, as noted in the dispositions for comments BG-0001, CH-0014, IN-0019, KR-0018, NO-0011, and TN-0002. As well, several National Bodies have request that other widely used standards be compatible with Office Open XML documents. To enable this, we are proposing a mechanism which allows any standard XML-based format to be natively used within a WordprocessingML, SpreadsheetML, or PresentationML document. This mechanism allows the use of the standards mentioned in the comment, as well as any other commonly used XML syntax. This mechanism is fully defined in the disposition for comments CA-0077, CL-0026, CO-0229, among others.