“Britain Faces Worst Year Since 1930s”

“Britain Faces Worst Year Since 1930s, warns IMF” screams an article on the front page of today’s Guardian.  It seems that that the International Monetary Fund has warned Britain that it will be at the bottom of the league table of major developed countries this year.

And although many will share a feeling of optimism at the recent political changes in the US, here in the UK we can’t blame Thatcher for this one.  And we can’t even blame Tony Blair – after all, who was the Chancellor of the Exchequer for all those years?

So what does this means for our networked services? What does it mean for those Web 2.0 services many of us know and love?

It now seems a long time since I used the line “People say Google may go out of business, but banks could also go out of business. But we don’t put our savings under the mattress just in case this happens “. That later evolved to “People say Google may go out of business, but, as we know, banks also go out of business. But we don’t put our savings under the mattress as we know this has happened“.  Should we now be saying “Google services have gone out of business – look at Jaiku, for example.  I’ve already moved my data to the safety of my institution.  You’re foolhardy if you don’t do likewise.“?

Well if you work at London Metropolitan University you’re probably more concerned about the sustainability of your own position and your institution rather than Britain’s economic woes.  As described on the UCU Web site “London Metropolitan University has recently had a cut of £18 million in its teaching budget and HEFCE has confirmed that it intends to ‘claw back’ £38 million in past funding as a result of inaccurate returns on student completion rates“.

But to shrug our shoulders and say “we’ll all doomed – not just economically, but also with global warning” is a defeatist attitude I don’t go along with.

I’ll be giving some thought about what I think we should be doing (in the context of  exploiting Web 2.0 service to support the aims of our institutions). But I’d welcome suggestions from others? Are any institutions making any strategic decisions in this area? After all, we were warned about the implications  for higher education last August by HEFCE’s John Selby.

Do You Want The Good News Or The Bad News About Jaiku?

A service announces that the software is to be made available under an open source licence. That’s good news, isn’t it?

A company announces that one of its is to be withdrawn. That’s bad news, isn’t it?

But what if a service makes both announcements in the same press release. How should we react to the news?  That’s the dilemma which uses of the Jaiku micro-blogging service are faced with following Google’s announcement: “Changes for Jaiku and Farewell to Dodgeball and Mashup Editor“. Vic Gundotra, Vice President, Engineering gave a positive spin to this announcement “we are in the process of porting Jaiku over to Google App Engine. After the migration is complete, we will release the new open source Jaiku Engine project on Google Code under the Apache License“. He then went on to add that “While Google will no longer actively develop the Jaiku codebase, the service itself will live on thanks to a dedicated and passionate volunteer team of Googlers“.

Some commenters focussed on the move to an open source licence (e.g. “Jaiku is going open source on Google App Engine“) whilst other headlines were more negative (“Google kills Jaiku“). For me, however, the interesting aspect of this news is how it should help to move the discussion on beyond simplistic cliches and perceptions.

A couple of articles struck me as particularly interesting.  An article published in The Enquisitr entitled “Google Massacre: Google Closes Jaiku, Dodgeball, Notebook, Catalog Search; Google Video Downgraded” felt that “The cut to Jaiku puts what was once a promising platform out of its misery. Since acquiring Jaiku, Google has all but ignored the service, culminating in a weekend long and seemingly unnoticed downtime in August.“

Meanwhile a Techcrunch article entitled “Jaiku Founder: ‘We’re Not Dying, We’re Morphing’” has generated a lively discussion on Google’s motivations for this announcement. I needed to read the statement that “But few people seem to care that handing out the code to the open source community and starting the ‘Jaiku Engine’ project is actually great news for companies, groups and individuals who were looking to roll their own, decentralized microsharing / lifestreaming applications, initiatives we’ve seen pop up here and there already” in order to make sense of it.

But the comment that “If the code that Google is releasing only makes it possible for you to run “Jaiku Engine” only on Google’s App Engine, then it is not open enough. I have the feeling that this will be the case.” is intriguing.  Are Google buying software such as Jaiku in order to ensure they will run on their platform engine before making the source code available to others in the belief that the big money is to be made in providing the platform and not the application.

Now isn’t this the approach which has proved so profitable for Microsoft over the past 20 years? And, if so, isn’t Jaiku just a pawn in a much bigger game?  But on the other hand if you’re simply a user of such services, maybe you don’t care about issues such as ownership and open source. And, after all, it’s the users who ultimately determine whether a service will be used or note, not the developers.

From Web Accessibility 2.0 to Web Adaptability

OzeWAI 2009

The opportunity to escape the depths of a cold January in the UK to give the opening talk at the OzeWAI 2009 conference was too good to miss. So last week’s trip to La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia provided me with the opportunity to go into the mountains for a barbecue, go to the beach, take a ride along the Great Ocean Road, see the koalas and kangaroos and try the local Cooper’s IPA (which needs to be rolled before drinking, I discovered).

From Web Accessibility 2.0 to Web Adaptability (1.0)

But I had to earn my supper (the goat at the barbie)  and so as well as giving the presentation on  “From Web Accessibility 2.0 to Web Adaptability (1.0)” I took part actively in the conferences discussions (and drinking). I have also made the slides available on Slideshare (which is embedded below).

The talk seemed to go down well – and I was particularly pleased that when I sat down after my talk and refreshed the Twitterfon application on my iPod Touch it provided me with instant feedback on the talk from two of the participants at the conference.  RuthEllison told me that she “@briankelly enjoyed your presentation this morning about a holistic approach to accessibility #ozewai” and scenariogirl also showed some Australian warmth: “@briankelly Fantastic talk this morning, I will come up and say hi at lunch ;)“.

The talk was an update on recent papers and presentations and contains much of the material I used in a talk on “Holistic Approaches To Web Accessibility” which I blogged about recently. I therefore won’t expand on the ideas and approaches which I explained in my talk. Rather I want to discuss the accessibility of the talk itself.

Accessibility of Talks at Conferences

As I’ve been doing for a couple of years now, the slides are made available under a Creative Commons licence.  In addition, as I’ve also been doing for some time the slides are available on Slideshare. These approaches provide a number of benefits:

Creative Commons Licence:

• The content can be reused by others by minimising legal barriers to their reuse.
• The content can be preserved by others by minimising legal barriers to their preservation.
• The content can be integrated with other content (e.g. ‘mashed up’)  by minimising legal barriers to their preservation.

Use of Slideshare:

• The content can be reused by others by using a service which allows the content to be embedded in third party services.
• The content can be commented on and annotated.
• The content can be tagged to facilitate discovery.

Over the past few months I have also been making use of a Flip video camera to record the talks I give at conferences.  A video of the talk is now available on Blip.TV and embedded below. The video can also be accessed from the UKOLN Web site, which also provides links to a variety of resources associated with the talk, including the PowerPoint slide, a HTML version of the slides, the AVI master of the video and links related to the presentation.

Discussion

But what benefits can the provision of videos of such talks provide? Using Web 2.0 video sharing services such as Blip.TV (or Google Video, Vimeo, etc.) can clearly provide similar benefits to those provided by Slideshare – and sharing a talk is often even more beneficial than simply sharing slides, I would argue. And if I reflect on the underlying purposes behind my talk I think I would suggest:

• To describe an approach (to Web accessibility) which I think addresses some of the limitations in current approaches.
• To seek to gain feedback on the ideas.
• To encourage others to make use of this approach.

The video helps with all of these purposes: the video can help to provide a better understanding than would be provided by simply viewing the slides. And despite the hard work which has gone into the various peer-reviewed papers which underpins the presentation, I’d be the first to admit that papers written for scholarly publications aren’t necessarily easy to understand.

And Web 2.0 video sharing services can also facilitate feedback and reuse of the content.  So if anyone would like to embed the video in their own Web resources (to share with others; to comment on; to critique; etc.) then I would encourage this.

But, and there is a but, is the video itself accessible? In the final panel session at OzeWAI 2009 I argued that the OzeWAI 2010 conference should be an’ amplified conference’,  with the talks being recorded and made freely available for use (and reuse) by others. And in response to a question as to whether it would be affordable to provide captioning for such videos, I argued that this may not also be needed.  In UK legislation, for example, we are required to take reasonable measures to ensure that people with disabilities aren’t differentiated against unfairly.  I feel that providing slides, audio and videos at conferences can now be done reasonably easily, but captioning is an expensive process. And providing a variety of alternatives (slides, videos, links to papers, links to resources) can enrich the impact of and access to the underling ideas  of talks given at conferences, including access for people with a range of disabilities.

Lisa Herod (scenariogirl) summarised the discussions on the Twitter back-channel thus:

Is it better to have some content or no content at all if some content == partial accessibility? Discuss. #ozewai09 4:43 AM Jan 23rd

What’s your view?  Should I remove the embedded Slideshare and Blip.TV resources from this post as they don’t conform with accessibility guidelines? Or should my organisation request that I remove them as they could be liable?

Growing Blog

I’ve just noticed that on 13^th January 2009 the UK Web Focus was included in WordPress.com’s list of the top growing blogs.

It’s been a while (over a year) since the blog was included in this list. I thought it would be interesting to see when the blog had been included in such daily lists.  It seems that WordPress.com provides a search interface for the blogs it hosts, and this helped my to find  record of the occasions when my blog was in the list of growing blogs. The details were:

• 13 Jan 2009:  No. 13 in list
• 8 Jan 2008:  No. 78 in list
• 3 Apr 2007:  No. 11 in list
• 20 Mar 2007:  No. 26 in list
• 7 Feb 2007:  No. 81 in list
• 15 Dec 2006:  No. 1 in list
• 20 Nov 2006:  No. 73 in list

There was also one occasion when a specific blog post was found to be one of the most widely read posts in a 24-hour period: the post on “UK Universities on Facebook” published on 9^th November 2007.

These metrics may be of interest to those who feel that there  is a need for objective and measurable criteria for determining the effectiveness of blogs – although, as will as Web statistics, remember the mantra hat there are lies, dammed lies and Web statistics :-)

You Don’t Blog? You Don’t Tweet? Next Applicant, Please!

Although I don’t feel that everyone should necessarily publish a blog, make use of Twitter or, indeed, give presentations or appear on YouTube or Google Video, I do feel that these can be skills which will be valuable for many information professionals and software developers at a time of economic difficulties.

And if that short-term project fails to receive continued funding how should staff ensure that they can continue to find employment in the job market? I would argue that having demonstrable skills in making use of a range of Web 2.0 technologies may well help.

This might include publishing a blog (which can demonstrate good written communications skills), creating and editing content in wiki tools such as Wikipedia (demonstration of collaborative working), using micro-blogging tools such as Twitter (the ability to interact with other users, including those you may not have met), using social sharing tools such as del.icio.us (as awareness of the benefits of sharing resources using popular services) and social networking services such as Facebook (all of the above together with an understanding of privacy and other ethical issues). And of course as well as having skills in use of such social networking tools, having a community of peers may well also be valuable in a new job.  Hmm, will:

“You mean to tell me you worked in a library and you only ever used email and a word processor? You used a Web browser but never used an RSS reader?  You contributed to a newsletter but never published a blog?  Thank you for your interest in out company. Next candidate please.“

be the approach that employers will take when theree is a large pool of information professionals to chose from?

Are Your PDFs Conformant?

I’ve never been much of a fan of the PDF format. Back in the early days of the Web I had hoped that the proprietary PDF format would be replaced by HTML and CSS. Back then there was an expectation that CSS would be developed to provide the fine control over page layout that is available using word processing and DTP applications.  The development of the Document Object Model (DOM) for HTML/XML various also promised to deliver an environment in which such resources could be interrogated and manipulated in ways which would not be possible with more monolithic resources such as PDFs. And finally HTML and CSS provided accessibility benefits not available in PDF.

However over the years it became apparent that HTML/CSS wouldn’t provide such fine layout control. And we found that HTML as used in the real world tended to be a structural mess, sometimes referred to as ‘tag soup’.

We also discovered that in many cases users preferred PDFs, especially for resources which designed as printed documents.

And last year PDF became an ISO standard, following on from the standardisation of PDF/A as an archival format.

So PDF is now an open standard, is suitable for archival purposes, has widespread support, accessible PDFs can now be created – and there is also an Adobe SDK which supports the development of applications to create and process PDF files.

Sounds good, doesn’t it? But in practice, do PDF files actually conform to the PDF standard? And although PDF files can be accessible, in practice do the PDF files which are produced in normal work flow processes  actually comply with accessible PDF guidelines?

I recently searched for PDF validation tools.  I found that a number of tools were available, many of which were expensive to purchase. I made use of one free email-based tools (Validatepdfa) and used it to report on the conformance of a couple of PDF files for recent peer-reviewed papers which I had submitted to journal / conference organisers. Although these files may have conformed with the publisher’s layout and house style requirements, I found the tool found quite a number of error As you can see the error messages aren’t particualrly helpful and it is difficult to see how such errors can be remedied:

Issues addressed (1) File structure Incorrect delimiter used for indirect object 340 0
Issues addressed (2) File structure Incorrect delimiter used for indirect object 370 0
Issues addressed (3) File structure Missing ID in trailer dictionary
…
Issues addressed (118) Fonts Font ‘TrebuchetMS-Bold’ was successfully substituted and embedded
Issues addressed (119) Fonts CID font subset without CIDSet
Issues addressed (120) Fonts CIDToGIDMap has been successfully embedded in Type2 font LHCKAJ+SymbolMT.
Issues addressed (121) Fonts CID font subset without CIDSet

I then used the Adobe Acrobat software to report on any accessibility problems with the papers. I used this tool to analyse all of my peer-reviewed papers which I have written in the past 10 years – and found that none of the papers actually conformed with Adobe’s accessibility guidelines.

The error messages provided in Adobe Acrobat were mostly helpful and it seemed that one consistent problem was the lack of a language to describe the contents of the document. Fortunately Adobe Acrobat does allow some of the accessibility problems to be fixed with the software – so I assigned the language English to all of the documents. Some of my papers now do conform with PDF accessibility guidelines (at least as far as automated checking tools can detect) – but the documents which had been uploaded to the University of Bath’s institutional repository a few months ago will be the non-accessible versions. There are issue about the workflow processes for uploading papers to institutional repositories: who should have a responsibility for ensuring compliance with guidelines; at what stage should appropriate metadata be added; who should ensure that the metadata is correct; what tools can be used to create and maintain such metadata; what level of detail should be provided; how do we ensure that the metadata isn’t corrupted during workflow processes; etc. Did you really think that using PDF was easy?

I suspect that most people aren’t particularly interested in conformance of such resources with PDF standards and accessibility guidelines – although it was reassuring to see the post on”Survey on malformed PDFs?” on the DCC blog.

But if we are serious about the importance of standards, particularly in the context of digital preservation, and if we are serious about the accessibility of digital resources, we will need to ensure that our workflow practices result in resources on our Web sites and institutional repositories which are conformant.

Or perhaps strict conformance with standards and accessibility guidelines is over-rated. Should we simply acknowledge that the ease of creation of PDF resources is key to the creation of such resources and adding additional steps into the workflow processes will add unnecessary complexities and barriers?

Risk Management – the JISC infoNET Perspective

I’ve previously written about the need to adopt a risk management approach to the use of Web 2.0 services. This was something I started doing back in 2006, when I wrote a risk assessment page which covered use of a variety of Web 2.0 services which were used to support the IWMW 2006 event.

I’ve an interest in further developing a framework for the effective exploitation of Web 2.0 service and clearly the risks management approach should form an important part of such a framework. So I found it very useful to read  the JISC infoNET Risk Management infoKit.

As pointed out in the introduction to this document “In education, as in any other environment, you can’t decide not to take risks: that simply isn’t an option in today’s world. All of us take risks and it’s a question of which risks we take“.

So we can’t avoid risk-taking. And yet the document suggests that public-sector organisations – which will include the educational sector – tend to be very risk averse, as shown in the spectrum of attitudes to risk-taking:

There is therefore a challenge which we need to face, especially if we are seeking to be innovative. And an important aspect of this challenge will be cultural change. Now many of the early adopters of Web innovations might feel that this view of being risk adverse isn’t applicable to them. But my interest is in mainstream adoption of innovative services and this  requires a willingness to take risks associated with changes.  And the document provides examples of people who are likely to be adverse stakeholders:

• People who fear loss of their jobs
• People who will require re-training
• People who may be moved to a different department/team
• People who may be required to commit resources to the project
• People who fear loss of control over a function or resources
• People who will have to do their job in a different way
• People who will have to carry out new or additional functions
• People who will have to use a new technology

So what should the early adopters and developers do if they wish to see innovations which they feel will benefit the organisation be adopted more widely? As the document points out “At the risk of labouring a very obvious point you don’t create risks by identifying them. You are simply revealing them so that you can do something about them”.  So one thing we should be doing is being open about risks and failures (as I have done recently in describing the failure of Squirl and Pownce). But we should also be open about the failures of in-house developments and project work, too.

The JISC infoNET infoKit goes on to list five stages in its approach to risk management: risk identification; qualitative risk analysis; quantative risk analysis; risk response planning and risk monitoring and control. In further blog posts I intend to further explore approaches to risk management in a Web 2.0 context. I’d be interested to hear if anyone else is taking a similar approach within their institution.

What Makes a Good API?

I previously mentioned “What Makes A Good API?” work which my colleague Marieke Guy is working on. Marieke set up a very brief research survey asking developers about use of APIs (both providing and consuming).  The survey (which was first announced on Marieke’s Good APIs blog and subsequently picked up by Tony Hirst and Mia Ridge) is due to be close tomorrow (21 January). So if you have an interest in having input into a document which will provide advice and examples of best practices  we’d encourage you to complete the survey. If, however, you’ve missed the deadline, feel free to add comments and suggestions to this post.

Marieke and myself will also be attending the second day (10 February 2009) of the JISC Developer Happiness Days event. Owen Stephens has already mentioned this event on his blog, and he picked up on the booking form’s categories of participants: “developer / hacker / scriptkitty / user / uber-user / usability expert”. Now I’m not a developer or hacker (although some of my best friends are).  But no matter which ctaegoigy you are in, we’d welcome your thoughts on good APIs.  And if you are planning on attending the event, it would be good to meet up with you.

500 Posts and Counting

This is the 500^th post which has been published on the UK Web Focus blog since it was launched on 1^st November 2006. That comes to an average of over 4 posts per week since the launch just over 2 years ago.

I’m pleased that I’ve maintained a consistent level of productivity. I made a decision shortly after the blog was launched to use it for sharing my thoughts and ideas, including those which were at an early stage of development, rather than using the blog purely for dissemination of well thought-out ideas or completed actions and work activities. And I’m pleased at the level of and quality of responses I’ve received, even to ideas which have been at a very early stage of development.

I’m also pleased to see that the numbers of visits to the blog continues to grow, with a particular rise in the last six months of 2008 (although, as I’ve commented previously,  these figures don’t always reflect reality).

Blog usage up to January 2009

But what of the future? In order to try and provide slightly more focus for this blog I will be using UKOLN’s recently-launched Cultural Heritage blog to write about topics which are more directly related to use of the Web by (public) libraries, museums and archives and will be using the JISC PoWR blog to write about issues related to the preservation of Web resources. I intend to continue to write regular posts on this blog on topics such as Web 2.0, standards and accessibility – and I’ll continue to invite your feedback and comments.

“SOA Is Dead”

“SOA is dead; long live services” announced Anne Thomas Manes recently. In her obituary for SOA she wrote:

SOA met its demise on January 1, 2009, when it was wiped out by the catastrophic impact of the economic recession. SOA is survived by its offspring: mashups, BPM, SaaS, Cloud Computing, and all other architectural approaches that depend on “services”.

Her post has attracted a lot of comments, mostly but not all in agreement with her view.

Now I can recall a few years ago there was a lot of excitement about SOA. In retrospect, however, much of this excitement seemed to come from funding bodies rather than developers or users – perhaps the benefits of SOA (reduced costs and greater flexibility) appealed particularly to those responsible for funding IT development rather than those involved in the development work itself.

But is SOA dead, I wonder? Or has it just been over-hyped and applied in inappropriate areas – I’ve heard it suggested, for example, that SOA makes sense in  the context of enterprise applications, but not for networked applications.

What do you think?

What I Would Like From The BS8878 Accessibility Code of Practice

I recently expressed reservations about the approaches being taken in the BS 8878 draft code of practice on Building Accessible Experiences for Disabled People. But I do feel that such a Code of Practice is desirable.  However rather than the current approach which places the main emphasis on conformance with WCAG, together with an inappropriate reliance on UAAG tools (which organisations providing Web sites have no control over) and a reliance on use of ATAG-conformant tools (which ignores the complexity of workflows, the increasing diversity of file formats and the growth in importance of user-generate content) I feel the Code of Practice should provide a framework for a user-focussed approach to accessibility, which provides a content for use of good practices for developing widely accessible Web sites, such as WCAG guidelines, usability guidelines, etc.

The BS 8878 draft code of practice already includes much valuable advice, especially on the need to engage users with disabilities in both the design and testing phases of Web site development and on the need for organisations to provide accessibility policies. These sections should be provided at the start of the document and not relegated towards the end, as they currently are.

Once the need to include people with disabilities in the planning and development stages and the need for organisations to explicitly state their accessibility policies, only then should the code of practice include implementation details. And rather than repeat the advice included in WCAG, I feel the document should require that such recommendations should only be used if they are proven to work in their intended context of use and they can be implemented and maintained with reasonable levels of expenditure of resources.

And finally I feel that the code of practice should seek to be future-proofed, and recognise that technical innovations are likely to take place which may enhance accessibility of services although infringing guidelines developed in the past.

A Framework For Making Use of Facebook

Many organisations are looking at ways in which they can make use of the Facebook social network. The Open University, for example, provides details about its Facebook page (which, as I described last year seems to be one of the most popular University pages available in Facebook). Jo Alcock wrote a guest blog post in which she described how the University of Wolverhampton is using Facebook  – and she’s written a post on her blog in which she describes feedback she’s received  from “students who feel it is a good way to be kept up-to-date with Learning Centre services and resources as they use Facebook regularly“. And I could go on to describe other ways in which Facebook is being used – as Jo commented in her blog post “It certainly seems that the use of Facebook in libraries is becoming more mainstream“.

And yet others seem to argue that institutions shouldn’t be making use of Facebook. Stephen Downes, for example, responded to my post entitled Facebook Saves Lives by arguing that “You don’t need Facebook to send out appeals; it is merely one more channel in a universe full of channels ” before going on to conclude that “There is only one context in which Facebook should not be avoided: the current one, in which there is no decent alternative.” And Paul Walk in a post entitled Why I suppose I ought to become a Daily Mail reader was dismissive of Facebook’s popularity although admitting that he “wouldn’t stand in the way of people wanting to access Facebook“. Mike Ellis responded to Paul’s blog post and argued that  the scale of Facebook’s user base cannot be ignored: “100 million people is an enormous chunk to ignore for the sake of some niche argument about content ownership and portability which *those same users* couldn’t give a crap about“. In response Paul stated that he is not “arguing that we should ignore FaceBook – it has its uses for millions of people. I’m arguing that it does not follow that we should necessarily advocate it’s use to support teaching and learning in HE for example. There are reasons why it might not be appropriate.“

Paul is quite right – there will be times when Facebook will not be appropriate. But I am more interested in exploring ways in which Facebook can be used to provide useful services whilst minimising the associated costs and dangers.

I have previously suggested that one approach to minimising the time and effort needed to provide content within Facebook for use by others is to simply provide access to content which is already available elsewhere on the Web.  This is an approach I use with RSS readers, Twitter, Slideshare, del.icio.us and other Facebook applications automatically surfacing content within Facebook which is created elsewhere.  I must admit that I had thought that this approach was obvious, but when I ran a workshop up in Edinburgh last year I found at least one organisation which was re-keying event details into Facebook.  No! Let’s use RSS to syndicate such content, please!

But over on Wendell Dryden’s qualities – communities – literacies blog Wendell recently pointed out that not all Facebook applications behave in a benign manner. Wendell mentioned  how I had “suggested a work-around which would allow users to harness Fb’s tremendous networking capabilities while still providing maximum access to content: host the content elsewhere, and then provide a link or feed into Fb” but described his experiences in using this approach with the Multiply photographic sharing service. However due to “Multiply’s somewhat complicated services structure” Wendell found that Multiply’s “smarmy behaviour” forced him into advertising “a beautiful photo calendar” to friends and colleague with whom he wished to share resources.

Now for Wendell “the search goes on. I still want a non-Facebook, real-world social networking site where learners I and can connect“. He feels that “Multiply’s too scammy. Yahoo’s lost at sea. This spring, I guess, I need to take another look at Orkut“.

But I suspect he may be on a time-consuming quest – and as I pointed out recently, Orkut currently doesn’t appear to have much to offer. And as I don’t use Multiple, Wendell’s specific concerns aren’t an issue for me. So for me the issue is how we can exploit the potential of today’s market leader whilst mimising various dangers.

Framework for Making Use of Facebook

I’d like to suggest that we might like to build a framework by considering the advantages and disadvantages of the two (?) main stakeholders: the institution and the individual.

The first draft of this framework is illustrated.  As can be seen use of the framework requires decision makers to document the benefits to the organisation and the user, the associated risks, the costs and resource implications for using the service and the missed opportunity costs of not using the service.

The framework requires that these issues are addressed within the context of the particular usage which is envisaged. So rather than resorting to generic slogans about the service itself ( “it’s a walled garden”, “it’s proprietary”, …) the discussion should focus on specific aims of the service and the way it is being used.

And finally there is a recognition that there will be prejudices and biases when using the framework, and suggested that it is better if such biases are openly acknowledged.

Is this approach useful? Is it worth developing further?

What Is A Web Site?

What is a Web site? Strange question, you many feel – surely everyone knows what a Web site is. Why would we want to try and define what a Web site is?

And yet if you consider last year’s announcement that all Government Web sites must comply with WCAG AA guidelines by December 2009, I think it becomes clear that a clear unambiguous and agreed definition is needed. Otherwise how will the Government know which Web sites – the ones which don’t comply with accessibility guidelines – should be closed down (as they have threatened to do).

Here are some thoughts as to may be meant by an organisation’s Web site:

The domain name:  an organisation’s Web sites refers to Web sites for which the domain name is owned by the organisation. So www.bath.ac.uk and foo.bath.ac.uk are the University of Bath’s Web sites.

The Web server:  Or perhaps an organisation’s Web sites should refer to Web sites which are hosted on Web server hardware which are owned by the University.

But perhaps a organisation’s Web site may also need to be defined at a more detailed level.

The HTTP protocol: Perhaps an organisation’s Web site refers to resources which are served by the http: (and https:) protocol schemes.  If a resource is accessed via the ftp: protocol from an organisation’s FTP server, isn’t this on the FTP site rather than the Web site?  And clearly http protocol schemes such as mailto: don’t really related to Web resources. This was an argument made recently by “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner” in a comment on this blog who felt that “Regarding the web as being “anything addressable with a URI” is not a reasonable definition. A URI might be used to address a file on an FTP server; do FTP servers now have to provide HTML versions of all their content? The FTP server in question may even have existed before Web!“.

The file formats: Or perhaps policies on a Web site should relate only to native Web formats, such as HTML.  This was another argument made by “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner” in a comment on this blog when he argued “sticking content in a powerpoint file isn’t ‘putting it on the web’, it’s deciding not to put it on the web”.

Some further complications arise when we consider the different ways on which Web sites are now being used. Agreements on the meaning of the term ‘Web site’ might make sense if we are thinking about a Web site as an informational resource, but may break in the context of a Web site as an application (Web-based email services, for example). And what if a Web page contains resources which are embedded from third party Web sites (e.g. an embedded YouTube video or embedded RSS content). Should the resources embedded from elsewhere be regarded as part of the organisational Web site or not?

Now I intend to avoid falling into the trap of seeking to create another definition. Rather I’d point out that when standards bodies and institutions develop policies  which apply to Web sites, they need to appreciate that this term can mean different things to different people.

DO you haved a clear understanding of what you mean by a ‘Web site’?

BS 8878: Building Accessible Experiences for Disabled People

The BS 8878 Draft Code of Practice on Building Accessible Experiences for Disabled People

The draft BS 8878 code of practice on “Building Accessible Experiences for Disabled People” is currently open for review, with the deadline for comments being 31 January 2009 [Note link changed as the original resource is no longer available 19 July 2009].

That’s great, you may think, we do need to have an agreed set of national guidelines which can help organisations commissioning and developing accessible Web sites. And the tight deadline seems to indicate that the code of practice will be out quickly.

Limitations of The Reviewing Process

Sadly, I feel, this isn’t the case. If you register to access the draft document (that’s right, you need to register not only to give comments but also to view the document) you’ll see that the first set of comments (29 at the time of writing) are very critical of the usability of the processes for accessing, reading and commenting on the document:

“Given that this is a draft code of practice for web accessibility, it’s astounding the lengths to which BSI has gone to make this document inaccessible and difficult to follow.“

“it is appaling that the BSI should even think of publishing this information in a non-accessible format. Clearly the BSI has no moral authority to recommend accessibility standards to anyone else“

“Accessing this document was the hardest web related task i had to do today. Comical when the goal was reaching a web accessibility document.“

“Is this supposed to be a demonstration of how NOT to make web documents accessible?“

I had similar difficulties accessing the draft document – and I am an experienced Web user :-). But eventually I discovered that there were MS Word and PDF versions of the document available which I printed out for reading at home.

Flaws in the Content

Despite this draft Code of Practice supposedly being intended, I understand, to document agreed industry achievable best practices the document simply requires use of the WAI model (WCAG, ATAG and UAAG) despite the fact that, for example, the document itself acknowledging that “At the time of publication, no single authoring tool that supports all ATAG priority 1 checkpoints is known“.

The document also seems to have a view of the Web as it was in the late 1990s – there is no recognition of the diversity ways in which the Web is being used, the complex workflows, the importance of user generated content, etc. There is also a failure to take into account the work of the research community in gathering evidence and using such evidence to develop more achievable approaches to Web accessibility.

The latter part of the document is better, requiring organisations to develop and publicise accessibility policies and involve people with disabilities in the planning and testing processes.

Dangers in its Implementation

There’s a danger, I feel, that this document will end up being published with the expectations that public sector organisations, in particular, will be forced to implement such recommendations. And I am concerned that this will be counter-productive – if there’s one thing that is worse that a lack of standards or codes of practice it’s severly flawed standards and codes or practice, in my opinion.

The document states that “Organizations wishing to claim conformance with BS 8878 should do so in hard copy, electronic media or any other medium“. Now although I don’t understand the structure of this sentence (organisations must claim conformance in any medium – how could they not do so?) it is clear that there is an expectation that organisations will state that they conform with the code of practice. Indeed the document goes on to mandate that “In making such a claim, a business or organization should address all of the provisions of BS 8878“. OK, so organisations can’t simply choose parts of the specification which they conform to (such as the reasonable and achievable parts of the document!)

What Next?

Now you may disagree with me. And whilst I would welcome further discussion on this topic, I would encourage you to read the document first, and give your feedback to the BSI.  You should bear in mind that the code of practice will be updated before publication to refer to the newly published WCAG 2.0 guidelines. And as that document makes it clear that the guidelines are format-independent, the principles will apply to, for example, MS Word and PDF documents on Web sites as well as HTML resources.  If you don’t feel it is likely that you’ll be providing accessible PDF and MS Word resources on your institutional Web sites (including institutional repositories) surely you should ask the BSI to revisit this document in order to describe more achievable goals.

Or to put it another way, is this code of practice intended to describe best practices which are achievable in the complex Web environment in which we now live or a set of well-meaning aspirations which are unlikely to be achievable in practice? And remember, if the code of practice is accepted in its current form the danger is that institutional conformance with the code of practice (in its entirety, remember) will be required.  And what will then happen if existing services fail to conform?  Will we see institutional repositories containing inaccessible PDF documents being removed from service in other that institutions can claim conformance?

JISC to Increase UKOLN Funding Significantly from 2009

UKOLN received a pleasing Christmas present recently, in the form of the JISC announcement of a significant increase in our funding. As described in the press release “This increase is both a mark of confidence in the work of UKOLN but also a recognition of the increasing importance of investment in a national e-infrastructure to support the UK’s global competitiveness in science, research and innovation“.

Sarah Porter, Head of Innovation, JISC commented that “UKOLN has been central to the development of JISC digital information programmes and services; it gives me great pleasure to announce this investment that will help support the sector to respond to emerging requirements for research and learning and the opportunities that new technologies offer“.

Now that’s a great start to the New Year :-) And I should acknowledge the contributions made by my colleagues at UKOLN.

Remember Orkut?

In a post on Salesman, Salesman… Why don’t you sell me something…Wendell Dryden described problems he’d encountered using the Multiply.com service from within Facebook. Wendell has still not found the ideal  solution: “So, the search goes on. I still want a non-Facebook, real-world social networking site where learners I and can connect” and then concluded “Multiply’s too scammy. Yahoo’s lost at sea. This spring, I guess, I need to take another look at Orkut.“

Now who remembers Orkut, Google’s social networking service?

As described in Wikipedia “Orkut is a social networking service which is run by Google and named after its creator, an employee of Google – Orkut Büyükkökten“. The service was launched in 2004, initially by invitation only. And it is now the most visited website in Brazil and second most visited site in India.

Sounds good, doesn’t it? And I  subscribed to the service shortly after it was launched. But what can it offer in 2009?

Logging on for the first time in ages I found the various discussion groups (forums) which I’d subscribed to after I joined, which included one on Libraries. And what did I find? Well not much discussion – and the odd spam comment, as illustrated.  Similarly the Web Developers and Designers forum, which has over 3,500 members, seemed to contain mostly messages advertising Web design companies.

But Orkut now provides more than just discussion groups – it also provides access to Open Social applications. And looking at the list of applications which I can add to my Orkut page I discovered, on the first page of applications, that I can add Photobuzz to “Make [my] friends smile! Animate their photos with Hugs, kisses, hearts and much more“, Superscrap to “Send christmas scraps and wish merry christmas to your friends. Dozens of new templates created to each occasion. Handwrite your personal message and superscrap [my] friends. True friends deserve a super-scrap everyday!” or use an ‘educational’ applications such as IQ Test to “Take a free 15 minute intelligence test to find out your IQ and compare it with [my] friends to see who is the most intelligent“. You can even install Slapster which promotes itself with the summary: “Don’t just poke your friends, slap’em around with Slapster! Select your friend’s orkut profile picture and slap it around as hard as you can with this fun application!“. This will be an undoubted favourite for Facebook users. Not!

Does Orkut have anything to offer me? I don’t think so.  It seems to have been abandoned by the 35 colleagues I had befriended.  And what’s the point of a social network if nobody is using it?  It looks like Facebook will continue to provide the environment for me to keep in touch with friends and colleagues – despite the criticisms which this service seems to attract.

Thoughts On Erik Duval’s Post On Standards

In a post entitled “Standards for Technology Enhanced Learning” Erik Duval gives his thoughts on the issues related to the standards which have a role to play in providing technology enhanced learning.

Erik feels that:

1. The main issue is no longer that we do not have sufficient standards. Rather, we have maybe too many and, more importantly, we don’t make use of them in very advanced ways… Tools are lacking or too much let the standard shine through, rather than focusing on the user experience.
2. We should avoid continuing the ‘not invented here’ approach that  has made us develop learning specific standards when there may be quite appropriate standards already out there or being developed.
3. Standards should not be research oriented but rely on proven practice. Of course, standards enable deployment at large scale, and  therefor make it possible to do research on global infrastructures.
4. Standards enable openness, and that enables innovation – that is another way for standards to be relevant to research.

I would not only agree with Erik’s comments, but suggest that they are relevant beyond the e-learning environment.

Erik’s comment that “Standards should not be research oriented but rely on proven practice” does, I feel, need to be reflected upon by the research community and by organisations such as W3C.  I’ve comment previously on the failure of W3C standards to have any significant impact, and I feel that this is due to a failure to take into account practical issues in preference to developing innovative or elegant solutions.  And I feel that there may be problems with funding streams which seek to encourage the development of new standards (which will, of course, promise a whole set of rich possibilities) at the expense of encouraging greater uptake of standards which are already available (and failing to exploit the rich possibilities which bright them abpout in the first place).

Erik’s suggestion that there’s a need to “rely on proven practice” does, to me, emphasise the need to engage with the software developer community. In the past recommendations of standards had been taken by policy-makers, often with little involvement of those engaging in using such standards. But now, I feel, this is beginning to change.  And I’m particularly pleased to see that JISC are sponsoring Developer Happiness Days in February 2009.  I hope we will see more of such events – and that these will provide an opportunity to share proven practice. And if the proof demonstrates that standards don’t work or are too complex to use, that will have been valuable in itself.

And finally when Erik “We should avoid continuing the ‘not invented here’ approach” I would suggest that we need to ensure that standards evolve slowly, with only minor fixes – and the fifth edition of the Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 provides a good example of this. It’s good that we aren’t at XML 5.0, with a new generation of tools needing to be developed to support each new version.