This workshop will concentrate on the design of the information set whichwill be presented to the user on the mobile device. The restrictionsof the mobile device are very different from what web users and authors areused to. However, new services, for instance those based on position-dependentinformation, also become possible. We need to investigate the new rules thatthe restrictions and possibilites of the mobile environment imposes on us.
This means that experiences from both the existing WAP and pre-WAP services,as well as experimental systems implementing mobile web and informationaccess, are of interest. Issues of information scalability, i.e. formattingaspects such as style sheets, cross-presentation such as aural and visual,and content management such as reformulation, personalisation, and conditionalaccess, are of interest.
Subject to the position papers received, the following topics will be covered:
Since the inception of the WAP Forum in 1997 and the W3C workshop on mobiledevices in April 1998, interest has steadily risen for mobile web access.Autumn 1999 saw the first WAP devices being deployed. In the telecom industry,UMTS and IMT2000 have been buzzwords for new bearer channels for severalyears. Broadband bearers that enable multimedia communications is actuallyon the verge of being deployed in several countries, and user trials havebeen conducted in others. The technology for allowing the device access tothe information has been developed and is in the process of being standardized.The technology for delivering web content to the mobile device is wellunderstood, wether it be WAP, iMode or any of a variety of TCP/IP basedtechnologies.
While the presentation of information on handheld devices is standardized,its effects and the results in the hands of the users are not clear. Theconvergence underway between the technologies developed by the WAP Forumand W3C points the way to the future development in this area, but to createand deploy services that use the converged technologies we need to properlywe need to understand the user requirements.
What we do not know today is how the user reacts to services which are intendedto be accessed with a mobile device, in particular where these services arealso available in the traditional web, and how to tailor the informationto create an optimal user experience.
We expect several groups to contribute to the workshop:
Please tell us if you have any special needs, such as a sign languageinterpreter, so that we can make appropriate arrangements.
For participation, a position paper from each organization is required. Outsideof the submission of position papers and subject to any requirements fromthe conference arranger, no particular requirements for participation apply.
Position papers are the basis for the discussion at the workshop. A positionpaper is usually short, around 1 to 4 pages (there is a maximum of five pages,or 27000 characters) and summarizes:
Position papers will be published in the online proceedings of the workshop,so position papers and slides of presentations must be available for publicdissemination. Submitting a position paper comprises a default recognitionof these terms for publication.
The Organizer will ask the authors of particularly salient position papersto explicitly present their position at the workshop to foster discussion.In this case, the authors are also required to create a presentation forthe workshop, and to make the slides of the presentation available on theworkshop web site.
This workshop is organized by Johan Hjelm, Ericsson visiting engineer tothe W3C, with some assistance from the W3C Team. Johan can be reached onemail, <hjelm@w3.org>. If needed,a programme committee will be organized by members from the WAP Forum andW3C Mobile Access Interest Group.
A web page with submitted position papers will be maintained, linked fromthis page, when submissions start to arrive.
A preliminary programme will be published as position papers arrive. Thiswill be further updated as time progresses.
The last quarter of the workshop will be a joint session with the UniversalAccessibility to the Web workshop.
Johan Hjelm, W3C/Ericsson, <hjelm@w3.org>