There was a lot of excitement earlier this week following presidential hopeful Barack Obama’s promise to “put government data online in universally accessible formats” should he make it to the White House.

“Open Formats Enter the Presidential Debate,” stated Andy Updegrove. “Obama Voices Support for ODF” wrote eWeek. “When U.S. presidential candidates start promoting their open-source and open-document platforms, you know that the open-source movement has finally arrived,” added Matt Asay.

Except it is not altogether clear what Obama meant when he referred to ‘universally accessible formats’. “Actually, in a clear indication that Obama has a good future in politics, he didn’t actually name any specific proposals related to ODF. In fact, there’s no saying what, specifically, he meant,” adds Asay.

“Another intriguing question is what exactly he means by ‘universally accessible formats’,” adds Updegrove. “Does that phrase indicate formats that implement vendor neutral open standards, or formats that are accessible to those with disabilities, or both? And if it means the former, what criteria would qualify a format as being “universally accessible?” Adoption by a consortium? Adoption by ISO/IEC JTC1? Widespread market adoption? All of the above?”

Obama’s technology and innovation paper (PDF) is no help. “Making government data available online in universally accessible formats to allow citizens to make use of that data to comment, derive value, and take action in their own communities. Greater access to environmental data, for example, will help citizens learn about pollution in their communities, provide information about local conditions back to government and empower people to protect themselves,” it states.

The leap from there to assuming support for the Open Document Format is a huge one to make. The confusion surrounding Massachusetts’s adoption of ODF has shown that what constitutes an “open format” is a moving target. So what of universally accessible formats?

The phrase could easily be understood to mean formats that provide accessibility for those with impaired vision. On the other hand it could simply be understood to mean XML. Both of those scenarios would likely lead Obama to Office Open XML (as was eventually the case in Massachusetts).

It is worth noting the pre-Obama use of the term “universally accessible formats”.

• The UK Cabinet Office uses it to state: “Documents designed to be printed are provided in universally accessible formats. PDFs should have RTF or plain text alternatives.”

• The Future Farmers of America uses it to state: “all downloadable files on ffa.org are available in either of two universally accessible formats: .zip or .pdf.”

• Searchlit.org says: ” We encourage a wide selection encompassing many disciplines and teaching methods… presented in small, quickly downloaded, universally accessible formats such as text (TXT) and hypertext markup language (HTML), in favor of larger formats such as portable document format (PDF) and Microsoft PowerPoint (PPT).”

• The University of Illinois at Springfield Division of Student Affairs refers to: “a variety of universally accessible formats including web based, multimedia, electronic versions, hard copy, large print, Braille, ASL and audio.”

• The Maryland General Assembly State Board of Elections mentions: “three universally accessible formats: html, printable html, and CSV.”

Clearly there is room for more definition. While it is good to see format accessibility becoming a more widely-debated issue, it is clearly wrong to assume that debate means an automatic win for ODF.