Australian W3C Office
Australian W3C Office Hello and welcome to the latest newsletter from the Australian W3C Office.
Dr Renato Iannella was elected to the W3C's Advisory Board in July last year. Dr Iannella's election to the Board was in recognition of his previous work on W3C recommendations. Dr Iannella, previously from DSTC, joined IPR Systems earlier this year.
Created in March 1998 the Advisory Board provides guidance on strategy, management, legal matters, process issues, and conflict resolution. The Advisory Board ensures that W3C remains responsive to the needs of the Members as well as entities outside of W3C (notably other standards bodies).
The Advisory Board is not a board of directors that determines W3C's Activities and direction; the Members and Team have this role.
Dean Jackson, from CSIRO, is now working as a W3C fellow at INRIA in Sophia Antipolis, France. Dean is a member of the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) working group and the User Interface Technical Task Force. Dean joins Charles McCathieNevile who is also currently at INRIA working on W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative.
XML Asia Pacific is a W3C Sponsored event. The conference is scheduled for the 31 October to the 3 November 2000 at the Sydney Hilton Hotel. Dr Hoylen Sue, Technical Manager from the Australian W3C Office is one of the conference's keynote speakers. For more information on the event visit: http://www.allette.com.au/xml
The Tenth International World Wide Web Conference (WWW10) takes place in Hong Kong, China from May 1-5, 2001 (http://www10.org and http://www10.org.hk).
Important dates with regard to Paper Submission are:
Paper Submission Deadline: November 13, 2000
Notification to Authors: January 19, 2001
Final Paper Due: February 19, 2001
A non-exhaustive list of topics of interest is: Hypertext and hypermedia : Languages and standards : Web accessibility : Scalability of web servers : Intelligent agents : Intelligent search engines : Resource management : User interface and interactions : http and beyond : Distributed objects : Performance and Reliability : Metadata on the Web : Interoperability : Architecture issues : Propagation, caching, replication : Naming and resolution : Real-time multimedia support : Privacy and preferences : Reliability and error recovery : Security : Electronic commerce : Metrics and measurement : Agent Technologies : Wireless and mobility : Web navigation strategies : Information mining : Multimedia and streaming : Collaborative systems : Computer graphics : Virtual reality : Browsers and tools : Practice and experience : XML : Web characterization Submitted papers should present original reports of substantive new work in areas that can be theoretical (models, analyses, techniques, semantics), empirical (experiments, case studies), or implementation- oriented (new systems, tools, methodologies, user interfaces). Papers should properly place the work within the field, cite related work, and clearly indicate the innovative aspects of the work and its contribution to the development of the World Wide Web. Papers will be refereed by an International Program Committee, and accepted papers will be published in the WWW10 conference proceedings. Best Paper, Best Presentation, and Best Poster awards will be presented at the conference.
Details of the paper submission process will be posted on the WWW10 Web Site. If you wish to be placed on the WWW10 Announcements mailing list, please send an email message to info@www10.org or use the form on the Web site.
On 6 September, Tim Berners-Lee gave a Keynote at XML World 2000 in Boston on "XML and the Web". The slides are available on the following W3C Web site. http://www.w3.org/2000/Talks/0906-xmlweb-tbl/Overview.html
The next face-to-face meeting of the CC/PP (Composite Capabilities/ Preference Profiles) Working Group will be in Karlstad, Sweden on 14 November, followed by the Implementors Days 15-16 November, hosted by Ericsson. The goal of the CC/PP framework is to specify how client devices express their capabilities and preferences (the user agent profile) to the server that originates content (the origin server). The origin server uses the user agent profile to produce and deliver content appropriate to the client device. In addition to computer-based client devices, particular attention is being paid to other kinds of devices such as mobile phones.
The purpose of the CC/PP Implementors Day is to encourage implementations, ensure interoperability between existing implementations, and enable developers to share experiences and express concerns to the working group. The Implementors Days will be open to all interested developers.
The Agenda will include:
Implementors are encouraged to publish information about their work to the www-mobile@w3.org list. There will also be a possibility to demonstrate implementations. Internet connections will be provided but it is recommended that implementors bring their own computers or devices. The GSM coverage in Sweden is excellent, but no other wireless networks will be available. A notice of participation is required to participate in both meetings. Please send it to Mikael Nilsson, Ericsson Infotech, mikael.nilsson@ein.ericsson.se. Questions should be addressed to Mikael or the chair, Johan Hjelm, johan.hjelm@era-t.ericsson.se. There will be a cutoff date for registrations to the implementors days on November 3, and initially the number of participants is limited to 50.
A patent was issued on 22 August (Patent 6,108,629, Method and apparatus for voice interaction over a network using an information flow controller) that includes (among other things) a way to scan a web page via audio.
Basically, the web page is parsed into "elements" which may be HTML elements such as titles, etc. or heuristically selected parts of text, e.g. the first sentence of each paragraph. Each element assigned a value, which might be thought of as "importance" or "salience". The user sets a threshold value.
Then, when the user scans a page, everything above that threshold is read, and everything below the threshold is replaced with a babbling sound suggestive of a tape recorder played at high speed, with additional sounds giving an idea of what is being skipped (e.g. "bings" for links, snippets of skipped material). For example, on one setting the user might hear the first and second level headings, plus the first two sentences of each paragraph, interspersed with babble, and punctuated by occasional "bings" representing the skipped text and links. The user can change the threshold at any point to change the level of detail heard, or simply read everything from that point.
This is just a partial, informal description. The full text and images are online at the US patent office site or IBM's patent server (Search on year 2000, inventor kasday).
This system would provide one way to address the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) User Agent Guideline 7, Provide Navigation Mechanisms. It would work best on pages being properly marked up in accordance with the WAI content guidelines. The heuristics could be used in accessibility "filter" tools being considered by the WAI evaluation and repair tools group.
Len Kasday is the inventor but the rights were assigned to the company where he was employed at that time, AT&T.
The White House invited Judy Brewer, Director of the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) of W3C, to speak at its Digital Divide Event on Accessible Technologies on 21 September 2000 in Flint, Michigan.
Ms. Brewer is presenting on issues regarding accessibility of the Web for people with disabilities, highlighting solutions developed by WAI to produce a Web that is more usable by all. "WAI works by bringing together industry, disability organizations, accessibility researchers, and government," explained Brewer. "We can show that accessible design is not only possible; but is also good design, and well within reach of all Web content publishers."
WAI's recent achievements include the development of guidelines for the creation of Web content that can be accessed by any user, regardless of disability, as well as guidelines for the production of software that makes it easier to produce accessible Web content automatically. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines serve as a definitive resource for Web designers to produce sites that work for the widest possible audience, and have received international endorsement.
Wednesday 15 and Thursday 16 November 2000
The Interactive Information Institute (I-Cubed) at RMIT University is hosting an International Web Accessibility Summit in Melbourne on 15 and 16 November. This event will inform and educate attendees on issues relating to web accessibility.
Presentations will be aimed at an audience comprising non-technical managers and commissioners of Web services as well as developers of Web sites and technologies. Keynote speakers include the follow W3C Team members: Charles McCathieNevile, Accessibility Specialist, Web Accessibility Initiative, and Karl Dubost, Conformance Manager. For further information or to register please email webaccess@iii.rmit.edu.au
The Internet Industry Association has created a Disability Access Virtual Taskforce which has been charged with the responsibility of developing a Web Access Disability Action Plan. The Taskforce refers to W3C's Accessibility Recommendations as the benchmark for making the Internet accessible to all. Enquiries for participation should in the first instance be directed to the taskforce chairman John McKenna at john.mckenna@team.telstra.com
Relevant URL: http://www.iia.net.au/index2.html
A Scalable Vector Graphics to text linearizer has been developed by Guillaume Lovet during his internship at INRIA this summer working with Daniel Dardailler. The project had three main parts:
Relevant URL: http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/ASVG/
National Library of Australia: the National library in Canberra has about 2 million books and a 6000 page Web site providing information about the Library. Enhancing the search capabilities is being achieved by adding metadata to all the resources using the Australian Government Locator Service (AGLS) metadata standard which is based on the Dublin Core. AGLS can be expressed in RDF. The Australian MetaWeb Project is a joint partnership of the Australian Defence Force Academy, Charles Sturt University, the Distributed Systems Technology Centre (the location of the W3C Australian Office) and the National Library of Australia.
The Department of Commerce and Trade is charged with generating economic development in the State of Western Australia through growth opportunities and enhanced capabilities for enterprises and communities. The role of the Office of Information and Communications, a division within the Department of Commerce and Trade, is to lead, facilitate, co-ordinate and work with agencies, businesses and communities, in order to maximise Western Australia's transformation to the Information Age. Becoming a member of W3C is seen as a fundamental way of playing a part in the development of the Internet and in online service delivery in general.
Relevant URLs: http://www.nla.gov.au/ and http://www.commerce.wa.gov.au/dct/oic/index.htm
A meeting of the W3C Offices was recently held at INRIA in Sophia Antipolis in France. The two day meeting covered issues raised by the offices for their constituency. The meeting also gave the W3C Team the opportunity to give a number of reports on the status of recommendations, policies and changes within W3C.
As well as having an office in Australia, W3C is represented by offices in Germany - Greece - Hong Kong - Israel - Italy - Sweden - Taiwan - The Netherlands - United Kingdom. See http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Offices/#List for contact details and links to their websites.
Meeting of W3C Offices recently held at INRIA in Sophia Antipolis
Many thanks to the UK W3C Office and Charles McCathieNevile for contributions.
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