Web 2.0

Web Accessibility means providing equal access and hence equal opportunity to the people with physical disabilities. Web, as it has evidently become an important resource in our activities makes it imperative that it remains accessible so that the users with disabilities can use it with same ease as people without disabilities. With governments enjoining new laws and guidelines to make the Web accessible, Web Accessibility is no more a discretion.

W3C’s WAI is one such effort to improve accessibility of the Web. WAI with the help of other interest groups formed guidelines and techniques to help different component of web accessibility. The major components of Web Accessibility are: Web Content (web page or web applications), Authoring (HTML Editors), Content interaction tools (user-agents, screen readers etc.) and Evaluation tools.

The guidelines recommended for these different components are as follows:
1. User Agent Accessibility Guidelines – Provides guidelines for the User Agent developers so that the user agents are accessible.

2. Authoring Tool Guidelines – Provides guidelines for the Authoring Tool Developers to build tools which generate accessible content. For example: ATAG 1.0 , ATAG 2.0

3. Web Content Guidelines – Provides guidelines and solutions for making the Web content more accessible and usable across devices. For example: WCAG1.0, WCAG2.0

4. EARL – provides a standard way for generating test results by the Accessibility evaluation tools.

The guidelines specified are basic, individual countries can have their custom accessibility standards. For example: 508, DDK etc.  

Though these Guidelines, address various issues of Web Accessibility, they all essentially relate to technical specifications (HTML, CSS, SVG, and XML etc.) which are used to develop the Web content.

Vijaya Bhaskar Peddinti
vijayabhaskar_p01@infosys.com
Technical Specialist
Web 2.0 Research Lab - SETLabs

Posted by Guest Author at 02:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As mentioned in an earlier blog on CISTM2009 I would like to talk about some interesting discussions on the topic of Web 2.0 and Cloud Computing. The track was chaired by Dr. Jai Ganesh and I was one of the panelist on this discussion. The third panelist was Prof. Rahul Singh, of the North Carolina University at Greensboro.

The discussion started off by Jai describing our take on the intersection of Web 2.0 and Cloud Computing. He elaborated on one of the basic tenets of Web 2.0 viz Web as a Platform and discussed how this connects with the concept of cloud computing. He highlighted the merging of software as a service (SaaS) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) leading to computing resources available as and when someone needed them.

To illustrate the concept Jai cited examples of companies like Slideshare.net which extensively leveraged the power of cloud computing. He interspersed this discussion with several examples of typical Web 2.0 applications such as photo and video sharing, auction sites, online retailers that encourage user generated content, websites that allow tagging and reviewing of content etc. He elaborated the business benefits of cloud computing for all type of organizations especially the start-up firms. He touched upon on the aspects of lower capital expenditure, infinite scaling, pay per use, and an always available resource.  This set the tone for subsequent discussions.

While some in the audience were obviously fascinated by the picture painted during this discussion, there were several others who contested and questioned the benefits mentioned earlier. The more obvious arguments were:

1. What type of enterprise applications are amenable for hosting on a cloud?
   
2. What about concerns of security related with data possessed by an organization?
3. What about ownership of customized applications?
   
4. How is this different from web hosting which has been existence since long?
5. Are there Service Guarantees or Service Level Agreements (SLAs)?
6. Who are the players offering such service?
7. What are the prerequisites for start-up that wants to be a CC service provider?
8. What kind of threats does one face when the entire application is hosted on cloud alone?
   
9. What stops the big three (Amazon, Google and Microsoft) from monopolistic practices?
   
10. What are the typical subscription fees for such services? and so on
    

Obviously some of the questions above were simpler to address than some others. For example question 6 about prerequisites for a CC start-up was answered simply by stating "Lots of Cash". Differentiation between hosting and cloud computing was brought out by comparing them with 'leasing of an empty office space' vs 'having access to a full fledged business center'.

Other questions on security concerns, monopolistic practices, SLAs, payment terms etc. were handled with a dose of some facts and lots of possibilities, and a bigger dose of imagination. By the end of the stipulated period for this discussions there were clearly two groups in the audience - those who saw the glass as half full and the others who saw it as half empty. On the whole we had generated enough interest amongst the people present at the conference and, in doing so, achieved our objective.

Posted by Dr. Ajay Kolhatkar at 01:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)