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⟶ CISD and DCI ⟶ Literature ⟶ W3C UK News (1998-2006)
⟶ CISD and DCI ⟶ Literature ⟶ W3C UK News (1998-2006)
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Issue 104: August 2006

DTI consultation - additional liability limitations for web index services

Closing date: 09 September 2005

The DTI is seeking the views of UK business, consumers and other organisation's on whether Article 12 to 14 of the Electronic Commerce Directive (which limits the liability of intermediary service providers where they act as mere conduits, caches or hosts of information), and which were transposed into UK law by the Electronic Commerce (EC Directive) Regulations 2002, should now be extended to providers of hyperlinks, location tool and content aggregation services.

It sounds boring, but you may wish to reply to this consultation since it could seriously impact your business.

If you operate portals which provide hyperlink, location tool and content aggregation services you are currently not limited in your liabilities from the information that you harvest for a variety of potential legal actions including breach of copyright, libel, defamation, child pornography, incitement to racial hatred etc... The proposal would limit your liability.

In contrast, if you retain intellectual property rights over information on the web you may want to stop the extension of the limitation of liability. You may consider this extension of limitations on liability an infringement of your current rights since the terms "hyperlinks, location tool and content aggregation services" may not be narrowly enough defined that your IPR could be exploited.

The DTI need realistic business examples on both sides of the argument in order to determine whether to modify the regulations.

EC Communication on e-accessibility

The European Commission will be issuing a Communication on e-accessibility on 31 August which will be available on the Commission's website.

The Communication will provide a roadmap in ensuring that all European citizens are given equal access to and benefit from information Communication Technology (ICT) products and services in the future.

An eAccessibility conference is being held at the Landmark Hotel, Marylebone, London on 21 Oct to discuss the Communication.

It will be a pan-European event, including keynote speeches from a European Commissioner, a DTI Minister from the UK, and speakers from industry and other member states.

The eAccessibility conference is linked to the European Commission's i2010 initiative, which was launched in June, especially with regard to the "Inclusion" work stream of this initiative.

UK DRC Guide to good practice in commissioning accessible websites

The Disability Rights Commission (DRC) made an announcement in April 2005 that they would be issuing guidance in the form of a BSI Publicly Available Specification (PAS) - "PAS 78: Guide to good practice in commissioning accessible websites". It was released to a review panel at the end of June, and is currently expected to be published in October.

A PAS is neither the law nor an enforceable regulation, merely guidance. In this case it will help site commissioners ensure that they are able to commission accessible web sites. It will refer to the W3C WAI guidelines and accessibility testing. If you already take the accessibility of your site seriously, and test it against the W3C WAI guidelines, then you will probably not learn anything new from the PAS. However, a DRC report (The Web: Access and Inclusion for Disabled People) in 2004 showed that many organisations that thought that their web sites were accessible, and indeed display the W3C accessibility logos, were not so - 97 per cent of large organisations claimed to be aware that web accessibility is important while 81 per cent of the sites tested lacked evidence of any attempt to make their content accessible to everyone.

EC Consultation on the Digital Divide

Is your business limited by lower coverage, high cost and low quality of broadband in remote, rural or sparsely populated areas of the European Union?

If so, you should reply to the European Commission's open consultation on new public policy actions at the European level to stimulate the provision of broadband.

Consultation closes - Friday 16th September 2005.

W3C field trial

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) calls for participants to take part in a field trial that will help shape the future of the Web on mobile phones.

To establish users' preferred method of navigation on small screens such as mobile phones, the MWI is calling for participants to take part in a field trial that will help shape how the best practise guidelines are created. These guidelines are one of the deliverables of the MWI Best Practise working group to help content authors build mobile friendly Web sites.

Segala, founding sponsor and steering committee member of the MWI, is managing the field trial. Segala provides a Web accessibility conformance certification programme for clients such as Mobile operator O2, and is an expert in mobile handsets and products testing.

Segala M Test

Segala M Test, a pioneer behind web accessibility conformance certification, is once again at the centre of the e-commerce accessibility stakes. In a report released this week by the computing and disability charity AbilityNet, Segala is clearly at the heart of O2's plans to make its portal accessible to all.

The charity's eighth quarterly e-Nation assessment of websites in selected sectors includes a statement of commitment to accessibility from Dermot O'Mahony, Head of O2's Portal Production:

"At O2 we want everyone to enjoy the benefits of good clear communication. We are committed to helping improve accessibility by doing everything we can to make our services easier to use. We have partnered with Segala M Test to provide a web accessibility accreditation scheme as we seek to improve accessibility for the disabled, the elderly and mobile workers. Segala is responsible for validating O2's web based supplier products against the WAI* 'AA' guidelines by providing a branded logo which acts as a seal of approval for O2. Segala is also providing ongoing advice to O2 on mobile device accessibility and is currently working with O2 on the re-development of its consumer portal and corporate website, both due for launch in the next few months."

International Semantic Web Conference 2005, Galway, Ireland

Sir Tim Berners Lee, Carol Gobel, Alfred Spector, and Daniel Weitzner will give keynote addresses at the International Semantic Web Conference 2005 in Galway. Full lists of accepted papers are now available on the conference website. The early registration deadline has been extended until 15 September.

DERI announces the first results of the MarcOnt Initiative

The MarcOnt Initiative has announced the preliminary version of a bibliographic ontology and bibliographic mediation tools.

The aim of the MarcOnt Initiative is to deliver the bibliographic ontology and related tools that would enable semantically enhanced digital libraries to utilise the abundance of legacy bibliographic metadata. MarcOnt ontology aims to provide the interoperability between MARC21, BibTeX and DublinCore.

Apart from the ontology, the MarcOnt Initiative has delivered a mediation service that translates between MarcOnt ontology and MARC21, BibTeX and Dublin Core metadata. The MarcOnt mediation service has been recently deployed in JeromeDL(v2) - e-Library with Semantics. This enhancement provides a unique way to describe the resources in the library database with the already existing MARC21 or BibTeX bibliographic descriptions.

MarcOnt initiative resources are available under Open Source BSD License.

For further information contact: Sebastian Ryszard Kruk

DERI announces HyperCuP (Hyper Cube in P2P networks) Lightweight Implementation

HyperCuP - is a P2P infrastructure for highly scalable and distributed communication. With HyperCuP you can distribute your application very easily. The topology of the P2P network is based on a full hypercube.

Due to the lightweight approach taken, it is very easy to enhance a single service with P2P capabilities. The HyperCuP has been successfully deployed with JeromeDL and FOAFRealm/D-FOAF projects so far.

HuperCuP uses Web Services for communication between peers and has been implemented in Java. It has several interesting features in particular an algorithm for very fast message broadcasting and efficient topology construction.

HyperCuP resources are available under an Open Source BSD License.

For further information contact: Sebastian Ryszard Kruk or Slawomir Grzonkowski

Internet Governance

The Final Report of the Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG) was transmitted by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi A. Annan on 14 July 2005.

W3C is an accredited participant in the second phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) to be held in Tunis on 16-18 Nov 2005. The second Informal Consultation Meeting on Internet Governance (open to all stakeholders) will take place at the Palais des Nations, Geneva, on 6 September 2005. The third preparatory committee for WSIS will take place on 19-30 September 2005, Geneva (Switzerland).

Daniel Dardailler is the W3C staff member responsible for issues relating to Internet Governance and the WSIS.

"Web Foundations" Highlights Universal Access to Information

2005-07-14: The W3C Spanish Office is pleased to present Shawn Henry, Jakob Nielsen, Steven Pemberton, Inmaculada Placencia, John Slatin, and Jeffrey Zeldman at Web Foundations 2005 on 22-23 November in Gijon, Spain. These noted accessibility, usability and Web standards experts will discuss Design for All as an essential requirement for equitable Internet access. Steven Pemberton also gives an XForms and XHTML tutorial on 24 November in Oviedo. The deadline for discount registration fees is 1 November. The event is open to the public.

W3C Day in Berlin to Focus on Mobile Web

2005-07-18: The W3C Office in Germany and Austria is pleased to present W3C-Tag 2005 - Das Mobile Web (W3C Day) on 14 September in Berlin, Germany. The event is organized jointly with Berliner XML-Tage at Humboldt University. W3C Day focuses on mobile Web and W3C's Mobile Web Initiative (MWI). Speakers include Philipp Hoschka (W3C) and Dr. Simone Emmelius (ZDF). The event is free and open to the public. Registration with Berliner XML-Tage is required.

Internationalization Articles Published

2005-08-05: The Internationalization GEO (Guidelines, Education & Outreach) Working Group publishes information to help people understand and use international aspects of W3C technologies. In the past month, the group published Using Character Entities and NCRs, Using <select> to Link to Localized Content and Ruby Markup and Styling, as well as numerous updates and translations. For details and I18n news and RSS feeds, visit the Internationalization home page.

Press Highlights

Browse W3C in the Press. A selection of articles since the last Newsletter:

W3C Team Talks

Browse upcoming W3C appearances and events.

New W3C Members

Please welcome:

Current Software Releases

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