W3C leads a New European Project: Multimodal Web

Financed by the European Commission's IST Programme and led by the W3C, Mulitimodal Web (MWeb) will support the development and adoption of industry standards ('W3C Recommendations') enabling multimodal Web access using mobile devices. MWeb is a key opportunity for Europe leverage key strengths (mobile technology) in order to improve Web technology developments and increase overall competitiveness. Multimodal Web access will likely be the first widespread practical use of multimodal technology, and will have a similar impact on the adoption as the original Web had on adoption of Internet technology.

The MWeb project includes both European outreach activities on first-generation W3C multimodal Recommendations and technical support required for developing a second generation of specifications with significant European participation.

The MWeb outreach activities will increase awareness and visibility of W3C's multimodal specifications within Europe. W3C will promote the Multimodal Web by taking part in public events through talks and panels, by organizing seminars, and by editing brochures and posters, etc.

The MWeb technical activities will provide European research and industry with competent partners within the W3C. Through W3C workshops, W3C hopes to raise European participation in W3C's multimodal work.

MWeb Milestones

W3C Workshop on Multimodal Interaction
19-20 July 2004, Sophia Antipolis
The goal of this public workshop is to get feedback from multimodal user communities less well represented in the W3C Multimodal work (eg the automotive industry/telematics, the home entertainment industry, healthcare, aerospace and manufacturing), along with feedback and input from the multimodal research community in order to strengthen the W3C Multimodal Interaction (MMI) Framework.

W3C Workshop on Metadata for Content Adaptation
12-13 October 2004, Dublin, Ireland
A document profile is a set of content metadata using XML or RDF vocabularies that will help achieve device independent presentation of any Web content. The scope of this workshop is to describe sharable, transparent and machine understandable explicit semantics at the content level (image, link, etc.), that the Device Independence Working Group (DIWG) will then frame as a Document Profile specification.

Links:
MWeb: http://www.w3.org/2004/MWeb/Overview.html
MMI Workshop: http://www.w3.org/2004/02/mmi-workshop-cfp.html
MMI Framework: http://www.w3.org/TR/mmi-framework/
DP Workshop: http://www.w3.org/2004/06/DocProf-WS/CFP.html
DIWG: http://www.w3.org/2001/di/

ERCIM is the European host of W3C