An identity model for providing inclusive services and applications

Abstract

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) need to be accessible for every single person in the globe. Governments and companies are starting to regulate products and services to ensure digital accessibility as a mandatory requirement. A recent example is the European standard EN 301 549, where the functional accessibility requirements for ICT products and services are defined. Especially on the Web, these standards must be integrated throughout the development processes, where the selected architecture models play an essential role. Starting from a model that is based on the OAuth 2.0 protocol, and that allows the complete delegation of authorization (so that an as a service access control mechanism is provided), this paper propose an identity model for providing inclusive services and applications. The model takes advantage of the users’ profiles and their functional attributes to determine how to serve web interfaces to them in a specific service. Those attributes are entirely flexible, and can be defined linked to users’ functional capabilities, or even a particular skill. We have implemented the proposed model as an extension of an existing open source Identity Manager and tested it with a real use case deployment. We conclude that the proposed solution enables a new identity paradigm that allows service providers to design their interfaces satisfying the diversity requirements in terms of design and development.