About RIAM
Research Aim
The high-level aim of the RIAM project is to identify and resolve the issues surrounding the creation of a system to enable the Accessible and Mobile Webs to interoperate. Our intention is to gather, and revise, the current disjoint sets of guidelines, best practice, and quality tests into a single homogeneous framework. We will validate our framework by running a series of iterative experiments, testing the results of these experiments against our objectives, and reapply this knowledge back into the framework. We have three main objectives as follows:
- Identify a homogenised system of Web guidelines, design techniques, and best practice.
- Developed a machine testable framework of accessibility along with any relevant additional non-testable components.
- Have experimented over this framework, and in the process of experimentation, built an automated Mobile Web validation tool.
Research Challenges
In order to achieve those objectives above, there are significant research challenges to overcome. This will involve answering a number of basic research questions:
- What Exists?
- Research into the fields of accessibility and device independence is extensive. Notable bodies with guidelines, best practice, and techniques to support these fields include organisations such as the W3C, IBM, and Fujitsu. By gathering the summarising relevant research within these fields, we can provide the basis for future integration.
- What Overlap Exists?
- By finding the intersection of current research from these different, but related, fields we can start to investigate just how both the Mobile and Accessible Webs can interoperate. Studying these commonalities will enable us to delineate the extent of the intersection, identify techniques which may be useful in one field but are missing in another field.
- To What Extent Does the Overlap Cover the Requirements of Device Independence on the Mobile Web?
- In order to determine the extent to which our theories regarding the intersection between fields will satisfy the requirements of the Mobile Web, we need empirical evaluation. We propose that a testable framework be created in which we will build immutable and machine testable and may change more quickly as new techniques and best practice are added.
- A Machine validatable Framework?
- Validation methodologies are of little use if they cannot be applied by machine. We will ensure that our framework is amenable to automated validation and also will develop a suitable validator.