This panel is cross-linked to a Call for Papers for a special issue on Future Visions of Common-Use Hypertext of the Journal of Digital Information. Participants, audience and researchers in general are invited to submit their visions of the future of "common use" hypertext. Please see the call for papers for further details.

The panel itself will be presented in an imaginary corporate setting. Panel members have been requested to submit a 5 minute proposal to a new multi-billion dollar international consortium, Next Big Thing Inc., that has decided to launch itself as the information nexus of the future. They want an infrastructure to enable them to do this. They are prepared to either use current technology as it is, augment it, or completely start from scratch, and have the resources to build whatever they accept. Each panelist will have 5 minutes to make their case, then will be examined by the shareholders (the audience) who will vote on the final technology to adopt at the end.

The proposal should include a background to the technology they propose, the steps needed to implement their vision, and the result in 10 years time of adopting their proposal.

Panelists are, of course, allowed (expected? :) to sabotage each other's bids, with commercial espionage, bribery, subterfuge, and of course, old-fashioned heckling all fair game - this is the funding oportunity of a lifetime!

Writing Accessible Hypertext/media

Friday August 29th, 09:00

How do you write accessible hypertext/media literature? One of the main problems in acceptance of hypertext/media literature is that many people find it hard to access and comprehend. The panelists will each lay out what they think accessibility is, and how authors should address it.

This gives a way to discuss two issues: accessibility, in both the wider sense of reader interest and the narrower sense of the WAI, and the penetration of hypertext literature into the 'mainstream'.

All enquiries to ht03@ht03.org