On 1 February, Peter Korn reported:
“The OASIS ballot for OpenDocument v1.1 has closed, and without a single dissenting vote, OpenDocument v1.1 has been approved as an OASIS Standard. This is another affirmation of the increasing participation of the disability community in developing technology standards… OpenDocument v1.1 is primarily the work of the disability community and experts in disability technology…”

For those interested in the changes:

• accessibility improved by the additions of:
  • “soft” page breaks (applications record how they paginate a document)
  • alternative text for images, hyperlinks, etc.
  • navigation order added to presentation slides
  • new guidelines on accessibility
• minor editorial changes - references, etc., cleaned up, obvious mistakes corrected
• clarifications on many features, e.g., bi-directional text, various minor features
• “writing mode” attribute added for bi-directional text
• RNG schemas corrected
• URIs replaced with more international-friendly IRIs

Commentary by Rob Weir:
“There is a natural tendency to shrink away from criticism, to retreat inward and retrench, and at all costs avoid admitting errors. But I personally believe that every time we are corrected or criticized, it gives us another opportunity to show our character by how we handle it… So it is notable that the OASIS ODF TC overcame its accessibility problems not with defiance and not with acquiescence, but by enthusiastically embracing the challenge, engaging the critics, … bringing in the experts, … and working within an open and transparent standards development process… This is what open standards are all about and why they are so damn important…. It is about how much we can do together to improve some parts of the technological landscape that are broken today for some users, and have been for some time.”