Empowering disabled users through the semantic web:The Concept Coding Framework an Application of the Semantic Web

The World Wide Web offers many services from typical textual web content to shopping, banking and educational services, for example, virtual learning environments. These technologies are inherently complex to use, but in their very nature offer many benefits to the disabled person. The traversal of the web relies upon the cognitive skills of the user. You need to know what you want to do. You need to understand what the site is allowing you to do, and you need to be able to complete the task by interacting with the website. The emergence of the semantic web offers the potential to reduce the cognitive burden of understanding what the site can do and how to complete a task, whilst also offering new solutions to typical accessibility issues. In this paper, we aim to present how the semantic web can be used to enhance accessibility. Firstly we'll give some examples of what is currently possible. Secondly we'll motivate some research initiatives to enhance user independence for the disabled person, particularly those that use Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) systems and/or are Learning Impaired