bill - 5:27 am on Jun 30, 2008 (gmt 0)

Removing Microformats from bbc.co.uk/programmes [bbc.co.uk] Unfortunately there have been a number of concerns over hCalendar's use of the abbreviation design pattern. This uses the HTML abbreviation element to add machine data to pages. Our concerns were: the effect on blind users using screen readers with abbreviation expansion turned on where abbreviations designed for machines would be read out the effect on partially sighted users using screen readers where tool tips of abbreviations designed for machines would be read out the effect of incomprehensible tooltips on users with cognitive disabilities the potential fencing off of abbreviations to domains that need them (travel - airport codes, finance - ticker symbols etc) Until these issues are resolved the BBC semantic markup standards have been updated to prevent the use of non-human-readable text in abbreviations.

They also go on to say that they will be considering the use of RDFa instead of Microformats. I've toyed with the idea of adding Microformats to my sites. I have a few sites that use them, but I haven't seen much benefit.