SVG Fonts is a feature described on section 20 of the SVG 1.1 specification that allows fonts to be described using SVG. It can be used to embbed a font into an SVG document so that the author can be sure that the document will be properly rendered in any SVG compliant viewer, not depending on specific fonts being installed on the user's system.

SVG Fonts can also enhance acessibility of documents because text is stored as strings in the xml file. This way, artwork containing text can be read by screen reader software. Also, adaptation of artwork to other languages is easier when text is stored in strings.

I will implement basic SVG Fonts rendering into Inkscape using Cairo's user-font support and Pango.