trip report from the eighth World Wide Web conference in toronto, canada first day (wed 12-may-1999)

opening ceremony:

according to the list of attendees, there are about 700 pre-registered people present at this conference.

welcome note:

• toronto is a world wide web in itself
• nunavut - "the coolest school of the north"
• off over 300 submitted papers, 48 have been accepted
• award for best paper: focused crawling (session A5)

robert cailliau said: 10 years ago, when tim berners lee proposed the World Wide Web for the first time to his boss at CERN in geneva, the closing comment was "vague but exciting".

key note speech by tim berners lee:

tim gave one of his very typical, enthusiastic but yet exciting talks. here are some quotes that i picked up and that i found especially remarkable:

• access for all
• exploitation of computing power in real life
• machine understandable data
• a short history of the web:
  • 1989 concept
  • 1990 browser/server
  • 1991 justification
  • 1992 persuasion
  • 1993 proliferation
  • 1994 WWW1/2, W3C
  • 1996/97 PNG, PICS a.s.o.
• anything can point to anything
• independent of everything
• minimalistic design
• human communication through shared knowledge
• goal: intercreative space
• needs some stability: slow down, get it right, reduce the number of invalid documents
• the machinery of the web: well defined data documents are basis for transactions (clean up the model !)
• expressive power: links of meaning form a web
• a web of thrust: a web of signed documents (W3C/IETF joint work on signed XML & RDF starting)
• web of people: weaving ourselves into the web
• raising the level of ethics
• have fun, dream, code !

W3C track introduction:

jean-françois abramatic introduced the five sessions of the W3C that we will see during this conference:

1. World Wide Web access
2. XML: from markup to meaning
3. web technologies serving society
4. multimedia models and management
5. community contributions and participation

W3C web accessibility initiative & web content accessibility guidelines:

WAI: accessibility of the web for people with disabilities.

barriers:

• web technologies
• web content
• browsers, authoring tools, related tools
• gaps of awareness of the need for accessibility

businesses may be unaware that they are missing this marketplace.
accessible design may help access with different devices including mobile devices etc.

activities include:

• announced W3C recommendation may 5, 1999
• techniques document published as a note the same day
• accessibility guidance for graphical, text and voice browsers, multimedia players, assistive applications as a public working draft
• accessibility guidance for WYSIWIG editors, conversion tools, dynamic content generators, image editors and site management tools as public working draft
• evaluation and repair tools
• education and outreach working group: increase awareness of need for accessibility, promote implementation

web content accessibility guidelines V1.0:

• provide text equivalents for visuals
• make frames accessible
• use meaningful link text
• add structure (e.g. <Hn> instead of <B>)
• use style sheets

total of 14 guidelines, see WAI guidelines

W3C internationalization:

internationalization and universal access (accessibility) are related.

issues:

• client-side translation helpers (machine translation)
• confusing dates (02/03/04 could be march 2, 2004 or march 4, 2002 or february 3, 2004)
• character encoding and language negotiation in HTTP V1.1
• allow cultural diversity, reduce technical diversity

W3C mobile devices

3 solutions to show web pages on mobiles:

1. resize
2. reformat
3. reformulate

applications are different:

• not about surfing, it's getting information such as "when goes my train ?"
• XML is the key
• first step: apply the WAI guidelines

"people should not think in pages, they should think in objects !"

mobile device and accessibility panel

comparison between access to the web with mobile devices and people with disabilities:
similarities:

• limited size of the display
• needs summarization
• needs linearization
• limited or no use of graphics

differences:

• people with visual disabilities adapt more easily to robotic voices and are used to speed up speech

everybody agrees on that mobile devices benefit from improvements for accessibility and vice a versa.

information should be provided consistently regardless of the device being used. people accessing a particular website using a regular browser expect to find the same information in the same place when they use a mobile device.

beside content and presentation, there is a third element: structure ! if the structure and the content are right, presentation will adapt gracefully to any presentation.

additional suggested reading

key note speaker john patrick, IBM

as on many WWW conferences before, john patrick gave one more of his very interesting and entertaining speeches. again a few quotes that i found especially remarkable:

• instant messaging: real-time communication with on-the-fly translation
• symbiotic video: tv clip where you can click on the product for detailed information or to order it
• lego mindstorm: learn from a 7 years old kid
• 24x7 learning: web based education
• the bandwidth will grow. the cable companies compete with phone companies which compete with companies providing Internet connectivity via satellite. full screen video will be available over this extended bandwidth.
• geo-independence: medical experts can analyze a patient via the Internet

poster reception:

jakob lindenmeyer and i presented our poster about measuring accessibility. we consider this presentation very successful. we did not only display the poster, but we also had a notebook with pwWebSpeak - a voice web browser - running and two Windows CE systems on hand. we had a lot of people who were interested in the subject, including representatives from the W3 consortium.

to main document

production note:

this trip report was written on a Vadem Clio C-1000 running Windows CE with Pocket Word. It was then transferred to a DELL Latitude notebook and modified as needed. this document is supposed to be HTML V4.0 compliant.

this page conforms with the WAG

1st_day.html / 17-may-1999 (ra) / reto ambühler