Gregg Vanderheiden [po@trace.wisc.edu]
Professor - Human Factors, Dept. of Industrial Training
Director - Trace R & D Center
University of Wisconsin, Madison
The information, telecommunication, transaction and computer systems are rapidly converging. Rather than having separate devices of computing, conversing, and sending information to each other, we will soon be seeing pocket, desktop and wall-based information appliances that we can use to watch television, read the news, exchange information, look up information, sell our old lawn mower, buy our groceries, etc. In similar fashion, the World Wide Web is evolving into a system which will provide all of the functions that the Web provides today, combined with television, telephone, and newspaper, but in a format that only loosely resembles the Web today. In order to make these systems friendly and natural, both graphic and spatial (three-dimensional) interface metaphors are being proposed and demonstrated. In addition to heavy use of graphics, these systems are using proprietary and highly varied interface software. Further, a number of major forces are trying to move away from operating system based appliances. Finally, many of the products are sealed (that is, they have no disk drives, extra connection ports, etc.). With very thin client models, the software generating the interface may not even be running on the appliance that one holds in one's hand. Our current screen reader design strategies will not work with these appliances. Although some of the interface stategies that have been developed for screen readers may be applicable, a new architecture and information acess paradigm will need to be used, and/or the access will need to be built directly into the applications from the start. This paper will address some of the strategies both for building access into systems and for providing simple, flexible external linkages to other access hardware or software.