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?
 

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.

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.

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

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.

The overall conference was replete with variety of parallel tracks including those on Design Theory,  Analytical Modeling and Simulation, Decision Support Systems, diffusion of IT, eBusiness and eCommerce, Enterprise Systems all the way to Social issues of IT.

The first discussion focused on whether Web 2.0 poses challenges for web accessibility. The panelist were Rahul Gonsalves, a trained designer and a usability and accessibility enthusiast; Dinesh Kaushal, a lead developer at an accessibility solutions organisation and himself a developer of screen reader enabled for Indian languages; and yours truly. I believe that the topic was interesting for most people attending the conference. I say this because although the discussion started at a late hour and went on till almost 7:30 PM, we had a good audience which was very inquisitive and interacted actively. We primarily discussed what and why of web accessibility, some business considerations for making the web accessible and legal regulations around the world that necessitated equal accessibility for everyone. The participants were so involved in the discussion that we barely touched upon the aspects of Web 2.0 posing a challenge to accessibility.

The accessibility case that introduced me to web accessibility was Sydney Olympics accessibility complaint by Bruce Maguire. This complaint was lodged under Disability Discrimination Act of Australia. The reason for the complaint was poor accessibility of the SOCOG website. SOCOG lost the case, reinforcing that  accessibility is essential and is not a difficult thing to achieve.

America online had to face the lawsuit due to inaccessibility of the client software which was required for accessing AOL services. The case got settled out of court when AOL promised accessibility of the AOL client software

Another lawsuit which made headlines is the complaint by NFB against the famous retailer Target.com. This case is particularly important because it is for the first time any court has formally accepted that the web is a place of public accommodation and Americans with disabilities act (ADA) applies even to websites and web properties. Target lawsuit became a class action suit. According to the NFB, the ruling sets a precedent establishing that retailers must make their Web sites accessible to the blind under ADA.

Web has come way ahead since inception and so are the disability laws, but it is really ironic that lawsuits are required to compel companies to build accessible websites. Laws are means to achieve justice but companies need not wait till someone sues them. Accessibility should neither be an afterthought nor a compulsion, but should come as a natural practice of web software life cycle.

Dr. Jai Ganesh will be chairing a discussion on 'Web 2.0 and Cloud Computing'. In this discussion we will explore the complementarities as well as points of intersection between the principles of Web 2.0 and Cloud Computing.  

I will be leading another discussion on "Does Web 2.0 Challenge Accessibility?" This discussion will bring to fore some of the challenges posed by Web 2.0 technologies for people with different abilities and debate the adequacy of regulations as well as technological solutions to address these challenges. Other panelists for this discussion include an independent accessibility consultant as well as a leading technology developer in the field of screen readers.

Darrell Shandrow, a blind student pursuing a degree in journalism at ASU, said:
“Not having access to the advanced reading features of the Kindle DX—including the ability to download books and course materials, add my own bookmarks and notes, and look up supplemental information instantly on the Internet when I encounter it in my reading—will lock me out of this new technology and put me and other blind students   at a competitive disadvantage relative to our sighted peers. While my peers will have instant access to their course materials in electronic form, I will still have to wait weeks or months for accessible texts to be prepared for me, and these texts will not provide the access and features available to other students. That is why I am standing up for myself and with other blind Americans to end this blatant discrimination.”

This clearly indicates that accessibility requirements need to be catered end to end. Accessibility features and provisions can be of help only if they are implemented in usable and accessible manner. There is nothing called partly accessible, it is either completely accessible or it is inaccessible.

A National Workshop on Web Accessibility is being organised by the Centre for Internet and Society (www.cis-india.org) from June 5 to 7, 2009 in Bangalore. The workshop is meant for web developers and aims at highlighting the importance of creating accessible web sites.

The workshop intends to educate web developers, from public as well as of private sector organisations, on how to incorporate accessibility features into existing web sites as well as those being newly developed.

The workshop will comprise of conceptual as well as hands-on sessions. The trainers are specialists in various aspects of web accessibility. The main focus will be on WCAG 2.0 guidelines. The participants are expected to have good knowledge of HTML, XML, CSS, etc.

More information on program schedule, speakers and registration details are available at http://www.cis-india.org/events/national-workshop-on-web-accessibility-june-2009