World Wide Web Consortium Research Articles

How Accessible the University Websites in Indonesia for People with Disabilities?

Website in higher education utilized for many purposes such as providing learning resources, information, and news related to student’s academic needs. For this purpose, university websites must be accessible for all users including students with disabilities. This article describes a study conducted to evaluate the accessibility of university websites for people with disabilities in Indonesia. The accessibility evaluation focused on compliance with the most recent international standards provides by The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) called WCAG 2.0. A quantitative research would be utilized in this study using website accessibility online evaluation tools namely, Achecker. This study comprises the analysis of accessibility of 20 websites from top-ranked universities in Indonesia based on webometrics ranking. The result of this study showed that 95% of the university websites examined carried problems in conformity with WCAG 2.0 Level AAA.

Multimedia metadata modeling

In recent years, there is a significant growth of semantically related and distributed data on the Web. In this context, metadata standards recommended by the World Wide Web Consortium have been used to describe and represent multimedia resources, making it possible to expand access points and improve the management, organization and recovery of digital resources on the network. A problem commonly found in institutional databases is the integrated treatment of heterogeneous data and the lack of standardization in description formats. The description of numerous items is generally carried out independently, with idiosyncratic standards of description, emphasizing different characteristics to be described and different terminologies to describe them, disregarding interoperability requirements between communities. The present research sought to advance in the forms of representation of multimedia documents with texts, videos, images, 3D models, audios, proposing an Ontological Model of Multimedia Reference capable of semantically organizing types of metadata to describe multimedia content in different contexts and needs. Methodologically, the modeling proposal was based on multimedia ontologies better placed in a ranking obtained from the NeOn Methodology guide, which ensured the selection of adequate knowledge resources in light of functional and non-functional requirements. The Ontological Model of Multimedia Reference proposed fundamental ontological classes and relationships from mappings and semantic alignments between reused ontologies, promoting a comprehensive architecture for the semantic organization of multimedia metadata addressed mainly to applications that deal with information resources on the Web.

Accessibility in 360\xb0 video players

Accessibility is a key requirement for any multimedia tool and application. With the current trend towards immersive experiences, such as Virtual Reality (VR) and 360o video, it becomes key that these environments are adapted to be fully accessible. However, until recently the focus has been mostly on adapting the existing techniques to fit immersive displays, rather than considering new approaches for accessibility designed specifically for these increasingly relevant media experiences.This paper surveys a wide range of 360o video players and examines the features they include for dealing with accessibility, such as Subtitles, Audio Description, Sign Language, User Interfaces and other interaction features, like voice control and support for multi-screen scenarios. These features have been chosen based on guidelines from standardization contributions, like in the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the International Communication Union (ITU), and from research contributions for making 360° video consumption experiences accessible. The in-depth analysis has been part of a research effort towards the development of a fully inclusive and accessible 360° video player. The paper concludes by discussing how the newly developed player has gone above and beyond the existing solutions and guidelines, by providing accessibility features that meet the expectations for a widely used immersive medium, like 360° video.

Assessment of Annotation Needs of Botanists

Annotation (i.e., making comments on a resource) is an important part of the vision for the Semantic Web as defined by the standards set by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Its goal is to make Internet-published information and data, machine-readable to better utilize it. Despite the important role that annotation plays in the Semantic Web, many cultural heritage institutions have been slow to adopt it. The access to open historical biological literature hosted in digital libraries, like the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL), has improved the efficiency of biodiversity research, especially in the taxonomic field. This amount of information has even greater potential for research if annotation capabilities are incorporated within those legacy digital repositories. As part of the project Consumers as Creators, developed by the Missouri Botanical Garden (MOBOT) with partners at Saint Louis University (SLU), the Web annotation needs of the botanical community were analyzed. Likewise, the practicality of using existing annotation tools to satisfy this community’s particular needs was assessed, including technical and operational considerations. To do so, 15 users of a botanical virtual library from five institutions were interviewed. Their answers were analyzed and classified taking into account the user role and purpose. Desirable functionalities of annotation software were classified into three orders of priority (Must, Should, and Could). Subsequently, six open-source annotation tools were evaluated (i.e. Digilib, hypothes.is, Pundit Annotator Pro, Recogito, rerum, and VGG Annotator) to explore if they fulfilled the annotation needs of botanists. The selected annotation tools were installed (when necessary), assessed based on different functional aspects, and their advantages and disadvantages were identified. Finally, a proof-of-concept prototype was developed to exemplify how those needs could be met within a digital library platform. Botanicus, a free portal to historic botanical literature from the Peter H. Raven Library at MOBOT, and rerum, functioning as a repository of annotations, were used to explore the implementation of a minimal subset of these requirements. A summary of the results of the assessment, the lessons learned and some of the best practices recommended are presented.

Arquivabilidade de websites para preservação digital: estudo a partir da área da saúde

Em busca de uma solução para compreender as razões pelas quais alguns recursos presentes em websites não são possíveis de serem arquivados pelas ferramentas de captura, surgiu o conceito de arquivabilidade da web. Apresentamos este estudo que propõe iniciar uma discussão acerca do tema, a partir do método CLEAR+ e da ferramenta ArchiveReady, e verifiar sua aplicabilidade a partir da identifiação de websites da área da saúde, com testes de preservação digital por meio do arquivamento da web. A pesquisa confiurou-se como estudo de caso, com procedimentos envolvendo pesquisa bibliográfia e documental, bem como o uso de software para identifiar arquivabilidade dos sites. Conclui-se que tanto os testes de arquivabilidade quanto os de arquivamento da web apontam para poucas difiuldades de captura, em pequeno grau, sugerindo-se, portanto, que para atingir uma melhor qualidade de captura sejam adotados padrões de conformidade na produção dos websites, de acordo com o estabelecido pelo World Wide Web Consortium.

Analisis Aksesibilitas Website Pemerintah Provinsi di Indonesia Menggunakan Pedoman Web Content Accessible Guidelines 2.0

ksesibilitasweb adalah penyandang disabilitas dapat menggunakan,menavigasikan, serta berinteraksi dengan web. World Wide Web Consortium(W3C) telah memberikan pedoman penting tentang aksesibilitas web yang dikenal dengan Web Content Accessible Guidelines (WCAG). Pemerintah indonesia mendorong pemanfaatan media baru yaitu web melalui Inpres nomor 3 Tahun 2003 tentang Kebijakan dan Strategi Nasional Pengembangan e-government yang mengamanatkan setiap lembaga negarauntuk membangun website. Oleh karena itu, pada penelitian ini dilakukan analisis evaluasi situs web pemerintah provinsi di Indonesia dengan menggunakan dua alat automasi evaluasi aksesibilitas yaitu TAW dan aXe. Penelitian ini menyajikan masalah utama yang ditemukan dari seluruh situs web pemerintah provinsi berdasarkan masalah, peringatan,tidak diulasdan kriteria sukses. Dengan alat TAW, jumlah masalah yangditemukanterbanyak terdapat pada bagian prinsip Perceivable yang berjumlah 6490.Dan situs pemerintahprovinsi yang paling banyakmasalahaksesibilitasnya berdasarkan alat TAWadalah Nusa Tenggara Timur dan Riau, sedangkan untuk alat aXeyaitu situs pemerintah provinsi Yogyakarta dan Provinsi Kalimantan Barat.

Update from the World Wide Web Consortium (WC3)

Within the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the Media and Entertainment activity both tracks and standardizes the media-related topics and features needed to create immersive experiences for end users. HTML5, WebVTT, TTML, and TTML profiles brought standard audio, video, and captions to the Web. Standardization activities since then have turned the Web into a professional platform fully suitable for the delivery of media content and associated materials by enabling missing features to stream video content on the Web such as adaptive streaming and content protection. Together with Microsoft, Comcast, Netflix, and Google, W3C received a Technology and Engineering Emmy Award in April 2019 for standardization of a full TV experience on the Web.

Socialising the decision-making process: transaction provenance decision support

ABSTRACT This paper extends some current decision-Making and DSS perspectives that were originally identified in Herbert Simon’s decision-making and action process model, socialising them in theory and practice to account for the effective development of decision support systems that can profitably be incorporated in the context of multisided platform- powered eco-systems. It shows how adopting these extended perspectives enhances the opportunities for supporting socialised (rather than individualised) action and development through ‘Transaction Provenance Decision Support’ (TPDS). It takes as its example SMART.T, a TPDS powered by two multisided platforms enabling trading, provenance-building and socio-economic development. These are (i) a provenance authentication platform, and (ii) a transaction management platform. Together, these platforms offer the core functions needed for a comprehensive TPDS. As discussed in this paper, these functions are: integration of transactions involving private and public goods in TPDS; exploring, and establishing provenance; structuring provenance within the World Wide Web Consortium’s Provenance Ontology; authenticating provenance; socialising decision enactment; anticipating good provenance within a transaction network. It establishes the importance of provenance in providing socialised, end-to-end, multisided decision support within the TPDS platform-powered eco-systems that will drive the rapidly expanding platform business sector in the future.

Exploring WHO Communication during the COVID 19 Pandemic through the WHO Website Based on W3C Guidelines: Accessible for All?

Health crisis situations generate greater attention and dependence on reliable and truthful information from citizens, especially from those organisations that represent authority on the subject, such as the World Health Organization (WHO). In times of global pandemics such as COVID-19, the WHO message “health for all” takes on great communicative importance, especially from the point of view of the prevention of the disease and recommendations for action. Therefore, any communication must be understandable and accessible by all types of people, regardless of their technology, language, culture or disability (physical or mental), according to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), taking on special relevance for public health content. This study analysed whether the WHO is accessible in its digital version for all groups of citizens according to the widely accepted standards in the field of the Internet. The conclusion reached was that not all the information is accessible in accordance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1, which implies that there are groups that are, to some extent, left out, especially affecting the elderly. This study can contribute to the development of proposals and suggest ways in which to improve the accessibility of health content to groups especially vulnerable in this pandemic.

The Value of Marine Spatial Open Data Infrastructures—Potentials of IHO S-100 Standard tο Become the Universal Marine Data Model

Marine spatial “open” data infrastructures (MSDI) have a significant economic and societal potential for coastal nations and their realization is driven by the evolution of the International Hydrographic Organization’s (IHO) S-100 data model for facilitating marine domain interoperability and the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) best practices for spatial data publishing on the Web. The recent European directive on open data and the re-use of public sector information, known as the “Open Data Directive” is a key driver towards the establishment of “open” MSDIs among other spatial data infrastructures. The paper discusses possible data architectures for the MSDIs, examines the maturity of open data platforms that they could be built upon and compares the most prominent marine spatial data models for their applicability in relation to three marine information domains. MSDIs can facilitate the continuous data capturing of spatial-temporal physical phenomena and human activities at sea and coastal areas, the corresponding data analysis and the decision-making for achieving continual improvement in the marine planning and management processes. MSDIs could play a key role in digital government transformation (DGT) for effective data sharing and offering marine services across various stakeholders. The information provided through a MSDI can be used for safe and efficient operation of maritime traffic, exploration and exploitation of marine resources, marine spatial planning (MSP), integrated coastal zone management (ICZM), environmental protection, and naval and maritime security.

Automatic generation of Web of Things servients using Thing Descriptions

Similarly to the standardization effort initiated for the World Wide Web in the 1990s, the World Wide Web Consortium is currently working on the Web of Things (WoT) specification. This initiative aims to tackle current fragmentation in the so-called Internet of Things by using existing Web standards. The ultimate goal is to cope with the increasing number of devices that are being connected to the Internet and to enable interoperability among them. On the other hand, Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) approaches make use of models to raise the abstraction level with the objective of accelerating the software development process, enabling design and code reuse, and increasing software quality.This work proposes to apply MDE techniques to enable the efficient development of WoT servients. Based on the WoT Thing Description specification, this work proposes both a textual-based concrete syntax and a model-based abstract syntax—both fully compliant with the WoT specification—that enable the generation of WoT servients in C++ with CoAP communication capabilities. This proposal is implemented by a tool that covers the whole development process, which is publicly available under an open source license.

Accessibility and Web Quality Information for People with Disabilities in Healthcare Structures.

People with disabilities are a major part of the society. The fact of being able to service themselves without any additional help in their everyday life is an important right, as well as the right to have equal opportunities in utilizing all health- related services in their community. Our research was carried out on a group of people with disabilities through a semi structured interview to clarify their needs regarding the accessibility of health services and the accessibility of the existing related information. In addition to the analysis of the accessible techniques of digital information, the accessibility, reliability and relevance of the information existing on health websites in Greece are evaluated. The assessment of the accessibility of information provided online is carried out based on the WCAG2.0 standard of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Through these surveys and procedures, we reach conclusions on the deficiencies of accessibility and solutions for improvement are proposed. The results present the need for improvement in the information related to the healthcare sector, as we realize that a very low percentage covers the three key factors as mentioned above. With recommendations we target towards a more inclusive health care sector for all individuals.

Temporal RDF(S) Data Storage and Query with HBase

Resource Description Framework (RDF) is a metadata model recommended by World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) for describing the Web resources. With the arrival of the era of Big Data, very large amounts of RDF data are continuously being created and need to be stored for management. The traditional centralized RDF storage models cannot meet the need of largescale RDF data storage. Meanwhile, the importance of temporal information management and processing has been acknowledged by academia and industry. In this paper, we propose a storage model to store temporal RDF based on HBase. The proposed storage model applies the built-in time mechanism of HBase. Our experiments on LUBM dataset with temporal information added show that our storage model can store large temporal RDF data and obtain good query efficiency.

Standardization Procedure for Data Exchange

Common specification of data promotes data exchange among many and unspecified individuals and organizations. However, standardization itself tends to discourage innovation that can create new uses of data. To overcome this dilemma of innovation and standardization, this paper analyzes and proposes hypotheses regarding the process through which the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has realized innovations such as web applications by updating the standard. I hypothesize the following changes in standardization process management at the W3C as key factors supporting innovation through standardization among stakeholders with conflicting interests: (1) defining the scope of the specifications to be developed according to functions instead of technical structures; (2) design of a development management policy based on feedback from implementations, referred to as an “implementation-oriented policy”; (3) inclusion of diversified stakeholders in open standardization processes that facilitate consensus formation and the diffusion of developed standards; and (4) adopting a royalty-free to encourage third-party developers to implement proposed specifications and advance update of proposals. This single case analysis leads to the development and diffusion of common technological data specifications, which are the driving factors for innovation utilizing big data generated by exchanging data of various origins.

Unified mobile accessibility guidelines (UMAG)

The attributes of a software product such as usability and accessibility are crucial, they allow the user to reach his/her goals, and additionally they give a better user experience. The first of them, usability, is oriented to satisfy the needs of the user with average capabilities and the second, accessibility is related to the users with disabilities. There is a lot of work published about web accessibility but, it is not the same case for mobile accessibility. This paper focuses on mobile accessibility guidelines, its overall aim consists of a set of unified mobile accessibility guidelines, based on guidelines such as Android, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The method consisted of: Examine and organize the existent guidelines; find elements/components and properties/attributes related to them; verify if the guideline applies to the mobile environment then, unify guidelines if there are two or more of them. The result of this work consists of a set of unified guidelines to develop a mobile accessibility guidelines standard.

Semantic Interoperability in the IoT

The adoption of the Internet of Things is gradually increasing. However, there remains a significant obstacle that hinders its adoption as a truly ubiquitous technology: the ability of constrained devices to unambiguously exchange data with shared meaning. In this respect, the World Wide Web Consortium has developed the Web of Things architecture to provide semantic data exchange. However, such an architecture does not cover all possible use cases and still has important limitations. This article specifically addresses these issues. In particular, it discusses the design and implementation of a solution that extends the Web of Things architecture to achieve a higher level of semantic interoperability for the Internet of Things. The proposed solution relies on a human-assisted translation process and defines an architecture that enhances the semantic compatibility between components in the World Wide Web Consortium and the Internet Engineering Task Force. The effectiveness of the proposed solution is demonstrated through both a quantitative and a qualitative evaluation, in terms of performance and key properties in comparison with the state of the art.

Development of an online digital resource accessible for students with visual impairment or blindness: Challenges and strategies.

People with visual impairment or blindness face a wide range of daily barriers, both at school and at work. This article describes the development process of an online resource, addressing Occupational Safety and Health (OSH), accessible for students with visual impairment or blindness. This study was framed in a Design-Based Research methodology involving the analysis, design, development and implementation of a digital resource. In the analysis stage, a first list of accessibility challenges was created allowing the design of strategies and specific technical solutions to approach them. The development process has shown that online digital resources can be accessible for users with visual impairment or blindness and even the most visual contents and activities (based on images and videos) can be easily adjusted. Online accessible resources should be based on the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) guidelines, allowing the proper description of all contents by screen readers, using audio description, accessible features and providing keyboard navigation. Further research must be conducted to deepen knowledge on the role of educational digital resources for students with visual impairment or blindness, namely regarding OSH barriers that workers with visual impairment or blindness face at the workplace (as visual safety signs and pictogram labels).

15 Years of Stanca Act: Are Italian Public universities websites accessible?

With the increasing spread and usage of Internet technologies, the challenge of ensuring Web accessibility for all, including anyone with a form of disability, has become an hot issue, pursued both by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and by governments in different countries. In particular, W3C has developed technical Web accessibility guidelines (WCAG), while governments have legally addressed the problem, by emanating specific laws and policies. In Italy, the Stanca Act, a law regulating the design and creation of governmental and public sector websites, recently updated according to last WCAG 2.1 was enacted in 2004. To analyze its impact, this paper presents a study about the accessibility of Italian public universities websites, by particularly analyzing their conformance to the Stanca Act. The reported analysis shows that, despite that the Stanca act dates back 15 years ago, Italian public universities are still struggling to satisfy all its requirements.

HAMAP as SPARQL rules-A portable annotation pipeline for genomes and proteomes.

BackgroundGenome and proteome annotation pipelines are generally custom built and not easily reusable by other groups. This leads to duplication of effort, increased costs, and suboptimal annotation quality. One way to address these issues is to encourage the adoption of annotation standards and technological solutions that enable the sharing of biological knowledge and tools for genome and proteome annotation.ResultsHere we demonstrate one approach to generate portable genome and proteome annotation pipelines that users can run without recourse to custom software. This proof of concept uses our own rule-based annotation pipeline HAMAP, which provides functional annotation for protein sequences to the same depth and quality as UniProtKB/Swiss-Prot, and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards Resource Description Framework (RDF) and SPARQL (a recursive acronym for the SPARQL Protocol and RDF Query Language). We translate complex HAMAP rules into the W3C standard SPARQL 1.1 syntax, and then apply them to protein sequences in RDF format using freely available SPARQL engines. This approach supports the generation of annotation that is identical to that generated by our own in-house pipeline, using standard, off-the-shelf solutions, and is applicable to any genome or proteome annotation pipeline.ConclusionsHAMAP SPARQL rules are freely available for download from the HAMAP FTP site, ftp://ftp.expasy.org/databases/hamap/sparql/, under the CC-BY-ND 4.0 license. The annotations generated by the rules are under the CC-BY 4.0 license. A tutorial and supplementary code to use HAMAP as SPARQL are available on GitHub at https://github.com/sib-swiss/HAMAP-SPARQL, and general documentation about HAMAP can be found on the HAMAP website at https://hamap.expasy.org.

Storing and querying fuzzy RDF(S) in HBase databases

The Resource Description Framework (RDF) and RDF Schema (RDFS) recommended by World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) have been used for meta-data management on the Web. With the rapid development of Web-based applications, the growth of RDF(S) data is increasing dramatically. In the context of open Web, uncertainty naturally arises in RDF and RDFS (RDF(S) in short). To manage large-scale fuzzy RDF(S) data efficiently and effectively, we propose, in this paper, a fuzzy RDF(S) storage schema with fuzzy HBase databases (FHDBs). On the basis, we investigate how to query in FHDBs. We propose a set of query algorithms. We implement a prototype system to demonstrate the feasibility of our approach.