Overview I taught Information Retrieval, Hypermedia and the Web from 2001-2003, covering web technologies, information systems, and retrieval techniques to 3rd year undergraduate students. This was during the early growth phase of the Web, making it a particularly exciting time to teach these topics. Historical Context The Early 2000s Web: Google recently emerged (1998) Web 2.0 concepts developing Social networking beginning (Friendster 2002) Semantic Web initiatives launching Broadband becoming widespread Mobile web in infancy Teaching web technologies during this era meant covering rapidly evolving concepts and helping students understand both current practice and future directions.

Completeness… As you may already know, last week a critique appeared of a paper authored by three friends of mine, Markel Vigo, Justin Brown, and Vivian Conway. Indeed, Markel and I are colleagues in the same laboratory. This critique was written by Karl Groves regarding a paper entitled “Benchmarking web accessibility evaluation tools: measuring the harm of sole reliance on automated tests” and was published at the W4A2013 conference.

The last year has been an exciting one for SIGWEB. From the sponsorship of the large Web Science Conference, to that of the small Social Network Working Group; from the increase in student travel sponsorship (to $25,000pa), to our increasing volunteer effort; the SIG has been at work at all levels of our domain. We have forged links with multiple (≈20) conferences and workshops across our field, building a better website for our members, changing our bylaws to cement our relationship with our conferences, while still maintaining our low membership dues.

This year the W4A be running a joint W4A WWW 2012 panel on accessibility and its definition at WWW 2012. This will be on Wednesday the 18th at WWW2012 but will be free entry to W4A Pass holders. The organizers (of which I’m one) suggest that there are many different views of web accessibility with many questions to be answered: what is the relationship between web accessibility and usability? Is web accessibility for all or is it strictly for disabled people?

“I recently blogged about a EU CARDIAC meeting in San Sebastian, discussing low income - ‘Identify human factors barriers to health, education, and participation of low income groups.’ stating that ‘There are significant and untapped opportunities to use technology better on behalf of citizens, communities, and digitally disenfranchised groups.’” I actually said that the opportunities created by digital technologies are not enjoyed by the whole of society, indeed, there is a strong correlation between digital exclusion and social exclusion.