ISO/IEC 13522 specifies the coded representation of multimedia/hypermedia information objects (MHEG objects) for interchange as final form units within or across services and applications, by any means of interchange including local area networks, wide area telecommunication or broadcast networks, storage media, etc.

MHEG objects can be produced by computer tools taking as source form multimedia applications designed using multimedia scripting languages. In this context, the MHEG script (or program) classes are intended to complement the other MHEG classes in expressing the functionality commonly supported by scripting languages. Script (or program) objects express more powerful control mechanisms and describe more complex relationships among MHEG objects than can be expressed by MHEG action and link objects alone. Furthermore, script (or program) objects express access to and interaction with external services provided by the run-time environment.

ISO/IEC 13522-5 defines the MHEG object classes for interchange and use in base-level applications intended to be run on limited resource terminals such as set-top-boxes in such contexts as interactive broadband services.

ISO/IEC 13522-5 defines the coded representation for program objects in an open manner so that program objects may encapsulate either standardised or proprietary program code. ISO/IEC 13522-5 allows program objects to include or reference programs that may be encoded in any encoding format as defined by the application domain.