Exploiting Semantic Web Technology for Providing Accessibility for All: New Horizons Explored in Context of Information Integration

The huge amount of data over the Web offers numerous possibilities to bridge the digital gap between the people working in heterogeneous contextual settings, such as the different social contexts, interaction devices, personal capabilities and preferences. It would be unwise to ignore the importance of the recently emerging activity based Web for all types of users, and its relationship with the Knowledge Management. The frequency of transactions made over the Web and the ever increasing published contents must be somehow taken into account considering the varying physical and cognitive abilities of the users. The exploitation of the quickly changing nature of the Web could help a lot towards digital inclusion of All. Though, ignoring this fact would result in accelerating the digital divide. Therefore, innovative approaches are required which are generic to some extent, and could further be customized catering different needs. Such an advancement, namely the Connecting Ontology for connecting the heterogeneous information domains, is presented in this book. A number of scenarios are presented where the approach could be usefully applied for the benefit of all types of users.

Muhammad Shuaib Karim is a faculty member in the CS Department of Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad. He completed his PhD from TU Wien, in 2007. His research interests are in the areas of knowledge management for providing Accessibility for All. He also worked for many years in the software industry developing Telecom prodcuts and ERP solutions.