Results tagged “WebAnywhere”

Global Reach of WebAnywhere

Although we didn't originally design WebAnywhere thinking of reaching a global audience, one of the important advantages of it is anyone across the globe can get immediate access to the latest version just by visiting the WebAnywhere Website.  The graph below, along with the associated numbers, demonstrate the very real global reach we've achieved in such a short itme.
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Comma-separated list of country/number of visitors pairs -- UNITED STATES: 6815, UNITED KINGDOM: 2307, CANADA: 675, ITALY: 611, INDIA: 455, AUSTRALIA: 409, SPAIN: 351, TAIWAN: 341, URUGUAY: 335, BRAZIL: 321, GERMANY: 315, SINGAPORE: 273, FRANCE: 265, CHINA: 207, HONG KONG: 147, THAILAND: 137, NEW ZEALAND: 127, JAPAN: 97, NETHERLANDS: 95, MEXICO: 67, SWITZERLAND: 59, AUSTRIA: 57, DENMARK: 51, POLAND: 51, IRELAND: 49, BELGIUM: 47, PORTUGAL: 43, SWEDEN: 43, MALAYSIA: 37, SOUTH AFRICA: 37, ARGENTINA: 35, IRAN: 33, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES: 33, FINLAND: 29, OMAN:29, NORWAY: 27, CHILE: 25, SLOVAKIA: 21, ISRAEL: 19, TURKEY: 19
During the past few weeks, large newspapers have stopped printing (most recently the Ann Arbor News).  Most often, these print newspapers have said they still plan to provide news on their web sites.  As this trend continues, as more of the information that used to be available in print or other forms becomes available only on the web, it becomes even  more important that people have access to the tools they need to access computers wherever they have access to a computer.

Our WebAnywhere project is a start on this - providing free non-visual access to the web, but many of the people affected by events like newspapers stopping their print editions are those who could benefit from other interfaces.  As just two examples, simpler interfaces could benefit all sorts of people who find current computers and browsers too complex, and magnification could benefit low-vision users.  WebAnywhere is transitioning to a platform that can handle these diverse preferences and let anyone provide new interfaces that someone might find helpful.

Toward this end, WebAnywhere is associated with the RaisingtheFloor initiative, which is a broad coalition of folks who have the goal of raising the base level  of access for everyone, regardless of disability.

WebAnywhere at CSUN

WebAnywhere will be visiting CSUN, so if you'll be there too and are interested in chatting, please find either me (Jeff Bigham) or Wendy Chisholm.

Wendy will be speaking about AccessComputing on Wednesday at 9:20am in EMP-2006, and I will be speaking with Annuska Perkins as part of the Microsoft Imagine Cup presentation Saturday at 10:40am in BLV-1046.

I'll also be checking email regularly, so if you'd like to meet to find out more about how you can become involved in the project, please email me at jbigham@cs.washington.edu.  I also plan to live blog the conference, so you'll be able to keep up with what I'm seeing in nearly real time. 
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