A Specific Ontology and Related Web Services for Assessing Accessibility Issues in Cultural Heritage Environments

The “Design for All” (DfA, 2010) strategy proposes a general framework for accessibility to Cultural Heritage able to integrate 3D Documentation, Information and Management (3DIM) Systems in monitored environments. Interoperability between information systems requires a common reference framework developed as a semantic layer based on an ontology. This ontology integrates concepts and relations involving a formalization of knowledge on physical domain, user profiles and tasks to be developed. The developed ontology provides support for identifying problems, selecting the most appropriate techniques and solving troubles along interventions by technicians. In this work, we introduce a Web Service in the Semantic Web framework supported by the ontology formalized in OWL (Ontology Web Language) and implemented with Jena framework. This solution is currently being applied in the Maritime Museum of Barcelona and a small urban district of the historic city of Segovia (Spain).