Web 2.0

PDF is a convenient way to put an existing content in a document on a Website. However the rapid growth in the use of PDFs on Websites has led to increasing concerns about accessibility, particularly for the users of screen reading technology, which converts text into synthetic speech. We need to make PDF files on the web accessible for the same reasons we make other web content accessible.

Before the release of Acrobat 5 in 2001, information presented in PDFs was generally considered inaccessible. However, the release of Acrobat 5 was a significant step in improving the accessibility of PDF documents. Version 5 and later allowed content to be tagged in a similar way to HTML documents. We can add XML-like tags to give structure to a PDF. What makes PDFs robust and accessible is the structure. A PDF is probably accessible if it is tagged. Screen readers had to be upgraded to understand these PDF tags. Whereas mere presence of tags does not guarantee accessibility, since they might have been wrongly used, the absence of tags definitely renders the PDF inaccessible.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) does not recognize PDF as a standard format since it requires the Acrobat browser plug-in to access the information contained in the document. Although recent advances have made it possible to create a PDF document that can be accessed by a greater number of people, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) of the W3C do not yet consider PDF as fully accessible.

In situations where providing accessible PDFs is not possible, some alternative should be provided for users who are unable to access the PDF but would still want the information it contains. The ideal accessible alternative for content provided in a PDF file is an equivalent HTML page that is both valid and accessible.

PDF accessibility is not as straightforward as HTML accessibility. The use of PDFs still causes accessibility problems for some Web users. However, in the next few years, the extent of this problem is likely to reduce as more accessible PDFs are produced and an increasing number of assistive technology users upgrade their devices.

Nishtha Srivastava (nishtha_srivastava@infosys.com)

Tarun Prakash Sharma (TarunPrakash_S@infosys.com)

Web 2.0 Research Lab, SETLabs.

Posted by Guest Author at 2:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Product development is the most challenging assignment and web 2.0 product developments have its own different set of domain of problems. Creating web 2.0 product needs very imaginative strategies since it deals with virtual world and social interaction, also it needs capability to understand customer requirements deeply to deliver the best possible solution.
There were many challenges during web product development. Some key challenges, and hence success factors are as follows:
Technical challenges:
1. Technical & Architecture level challenges: A key success for any product is its platform independent, flexible, modular, maintainable and cost effective architecture. Product should be architected to manage scalability and flexibility to be deployed across various network topographies. Hence all the components should be oriented to run on web based platform enhancing their capability as independent functions.
For ease of customization and commercialization try  to use open source framework and separate technology with open source as much as possible so that it can be easily replaceable by any other framework in future if required.
2. Faster development speed: Faster development speed is mantra for research based product. Use faster development techniques to get it in market faster. It is advisable to follow modular architecture which helps to develop all modules independently in parallel. Develop modules as web services, separate service layer and use shared resources like database, web servers etc.
3. Distinguish Factors: To stand high between all existing competitors in your product area, it is challenging tasks to build intelligence in your product to distinguish it from other available products. With extensive research in product area, build intelligence in your product by capturing domain specific, technology specific best design practices.
4. Lack of Product development Processes and Methodology: In case of lack of maturity level in product development methodology, try to select right set of people with research background, solid technical background, management background in your team to develop your product end to end.
Business Challenges:
5. Challenges in attracting revenue potential: It is always very challenging to get funds approved for any product development.  One needs to convince management with solid revenue potential with product idea. It is beneficial to conduct research to find out importance of web product in today’s world and prepare solid business case to prove that your product has a potential for repeatable business and continuous demand in future.
6. Lack of early adopter customers: it is always a very challenging to attract customer initially. The amount of business you get is highly proportional to the amount of effort that you put in marketing your business. First it is important to figure out who are right customers for your product and then define a attractive revenue model for customer to buy and serve the needs of customer. It could be license, or license + services, along with support -- there are alternate transaction or revenue share models which have found wide acceptance.

Vidya Sachin Abhyankar
Product Manager- Web 2.0 Research Lab, SETLabs
vidyas_abhyankar@infosys.com

Posted by Guest Author at 2:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Humans are usually equipped with 5 senses, and almost 90% of the interactions they engage in involve more than 2 of the senses they possess. Web since its inseption has been always attempting to create interactions which increasingly resemble real human interactions. As result web can not be considered as a place to have unimodal interaction. In fact multi modal interaction possibilities make the web an attractive proposition for diverse communities in diverse situations. Though it all started as a primerilyly text based interface soon graphics and voice found their place in the revolution and web pages started looking more fancy and talkative. On other side of the scene advancements in assistive technologies empowered differently abled users and made web interactions possible for most of the mankind. users want to be online using different access devices like cell phones and web TV. they want to use varied input modalities like hand writing and voice. They expect text, graphic and voice all merged as a single output.

 Any organization aspiring to reach all the customer base can no longer restrict itself to use of uni modal interactions. As a obvious effect, multimodality of any interface we think of is a necessity and not an option.

W3C the parent organization of web is already developing standards for facilitating production of applications having multiple input and output modalities. The initiative is known as Multimodal Interaction Activity. In subsequent posts we will try to understand use cases for multimodal interactions and W3C Multimodal Interaction Framework.

Shrirang Prakash Sahasrabudhe
Accessibility Specialist- SETLabs
Shrirang_s@infosys.com

Posted by Guest Author at 1:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Multiple inference options exist for understanding the behavior of online social networks. One area of analysis is that of focusing purely on the content - discovering concepts, facts or opinions from the content posted by users. A second type of analysis focus on the community of users to discover networks (or sub-groups) in the community and learn how those sub-groups get formed or changed and the influence they exercise.
 
User analysis will provide a greater value over time as the analysis reveals the sources of ideas and not just the expression of an idea or concept. By identifying a user who adds greater than average value to the community, there is potential to increase their activity through managing the relationship with that user – this is a way to manage network externalities by providing incentives to continue behavior that generates positive externality.

By applying network analysis in the social media related to a B2C context, enterprises can aim to identify key influencers in the social media, understand their behaviors and explore how those networks change over a period of time. Some questions which may get answered in the process include:

1. Who are the key influencers in a social network? What are their attributes?
2. How do they exercise influence in the network?
3. How do network structures and positions change over time?
 

Posted by Dr. Jai Ganesh at 3:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Attendee registration is open for the 25th Annual International Technology & Persons with Disabilities Conference http://csunconference.org/index.cfm?EID=80000218&p=149. The conference is happening between March 22-27, 2010 at Manchester Grand Hyatt Hotel, San Diego, CA. There are a number of very interesting sessions scheduled for CSUN.

Rakesh Babu, PhD student of the University of North Carolina, Greensboro is conducting a session at CSUN titled Accessibility and Usability of Web-Enhanced Instruction: Blind Student’s Challenges in Online Assessments ( http://csunconference.org/index.cfm?EID=80000218&p=151&page=scheduledetail&LCID=3886&ECTID=0) on March 24th.

Posted by Dr. Jai Ganesh at 8:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We recently built a Reputation System facebook application. The use of Social networking sites has increased remarkably over the years and enables us to connect, keep in touch, share life experiences and also meet new people. Statistics show that Facebook has over 400 Million active users and at least 50 percent of them log on to Facebook in any given day. In addition an average user sends 8 friend requests per month. On the internet, when users meet new people, they have no idea about what kind of person he/she is. Thus it is hard to trust and easy to get deceived. A reputation system is hence required, to collect feedback about users from their friends so as to calculate a reputation score that can be shown on personal profiles. This reputation score can help identify the frauds from the general pool of users, which will allow transactions (non-monetary, e.g. sharing important information) over the internet to embrace a higher sense of assurance. Prominent reputation systems include Search (e.g. PageRank), Commerce (e.g. eBay, Epinions), Blogs (e.g. Blogger), Broad Reputation systems (e.g. Yelp) etc. A reputation system aggregates, calculates and maintains the reputation values for people, entities, organisations etc. The reputation value maintained by the reputation system can be used for making quick decisions.

Our Reputation System faceboook app maintains complete anonymity between the reputation score provider and the reputation score consumer. You can access the facebook app as well as embed it as part of your facebook profile. The app will work well with Firefox.

Go to http://apps.facebook.com/reputation-system/

1.Click on “Allow” to add the application.
2.Choose a friend to give feedback about. Click on “Click here to submit a score”
3.Answer the respective questions.
4.Add a few words in the comment.
5.Click on submit.

Posted by Dr. Jai Ganesh at 8:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)