Design for All as a Challenge for Hypermedia Engineering

Volker Mattick (Chair of Programming Systems and Compiler Construction, FuLDIT Research Group, University of Dortmund, Germany)

Abstract: Design for All is an important challenge for hypermedia engineering. We analyze this challenge and show that it is necessary to find a way of describing partially designed hypermedia documents that can then be transformed into different hypermedia applications according to user needs and call this concept "semi-documents". We sketch similarities and differences to existing formalisms and conclude that there are three areas in which functional languages can make a contribution: the development of an embedded special-purpose language for describing semi-documents, the building of generators which produce hypermedia applications from semi-document, and the realization of support tools for the development of semi-documents.

Keywords: design techniques, functional programming, hypermedia engineering

Categories: D.1.1, D.2.2, H.5.4