My final week discussing Dix 2010 [1] which I covered last week, and the week before that too. Now lets: imagine you have a group of children and want to give them lunch. In the UK you might well choose baked beans. Not the most exciting choice, but few children actively dislike baked beans; they are acceptable to everyone. However, give each of those children a euro (or maybe two) in a sweet shop … they will all come away with a different chocolate bar, the chocolate bar that is ‘OK’ for everyone gets chosen by none.

Interesting ideas coming from the Model-Based UI XG W3C Incubator Group with their Final Report of 04 May 2010 proposing model driven approaches to Web interface creation, and Web application Interaction. Within the Web Ergonomics domain I’m particularly interested in the sections on user modelling [1] via the use of an ontology [2]. Now while I think this particular approach shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the ways in which ontologies are used within the semantic Web and Description Logic communities; mainly because they seem to want to try and model an individual user as opposed to a generic type of user.

Ask any well informed Web developer to rate how important Web accessibility is, and I’d expect most to rank it high. Ask them why, and I’d expect most to talk about disabled users, altruism, and the law. An enlightened few may talk about the business case, or expand on the many technical advantages of making their sites accessible. As a professional developer you’ll know that many disabled users consider the Web to be a primary source for information, employment and entertainment.