Monthly Archives: May 2011

Funded PhD in the Harmonised Unified Web Interface [#accessibility #a11y]

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“We believe that high-complexity interaction, defined by choice and flexibility, is the key problem. Choice and flexibility are normally seen as positive in that, from a technology perspective, ‘more’ adds-value; however we disagree and propose a counter intuitive investigation of the benefits of the opposing principles centred around inflexibility and constraint. The object of this PhD project is to empirically test this belief.”

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Funded PhD in Web Evaluation Orchestration [#accessibility #a11y]

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Kool Aid

Time to Drink the PhD Kool-Aid?

We believe that a combinatorial approach to evaluation may be more effective than those applied by individual tools and engines. The object of this PhD project is to empirically test this belief.

Understanding website conformance to specifications, guidelines, accessibility and usability requirements is currently a  complicated – and for the most part unachievable – process. A problem amplified where human interaction is required for evaluation, or when different evaluation engines produced different results. We believe that a combinatorial approach to evaluation may be more effective than those applied by individual tools and engines.

The object of this project is to empirically test this belief by: deciding on the minimum number of pages required to fully test a website; creating a set of algorithms to orchestrate pre-existing accessibility evaluation tools over that website; facilitate interoperability between these heterogeneous engines and – in concert with human evaluation – generate a combinatorial analysis of the guideline conformance of the site providing a single homogeneous / unified evaluation report. Finally, testing this combined approach against standard measures to evaluate the validity of the outcomes.

A student suitable for the PhD should have a background in computer science, human computer interaction, human factors or the like. they should possess creative problem-solving skills and be able to interact with people for human evaluations and experimentation. However, you should also be committed to progressing your career in human factors with specific focus on web ergonomics and accessibility.

We have funded PhD opportunities – in the Web Ergonomics Laboratory – for high quality committed European students who have a relevant undergraduate degree, or postgraduate Masters degree, on our 4 year CDT Programme; Part funded (International Fees Waiver) PhD opportunities for high quality committed International students who have a relevant postgraduate Masters degree, on our 3 year PhD Programme; and 30% fee discounted PhD opportunities for high quality committed students who have a relevant postgraduate Masters degree, on our Split-Site PhD Programme – whereby the student spends most of their time at a suitable research centre (or research employer) in their home country, travelling to Manchester for set periods each year.

These opportunities will all require hard work and a dedication of time, indeed, you should think of your PhD here in Manchester as a Research post in which will normally not work less than fifty hours a week – and will often work many more.  Remember you are required to have good time management, and should have the ability to spread your energy equally through the whole project. Most reading/analysing will be done outside the normal lab day.  You may also be asked to come in early or late or at weekends for supervision or meetings — simply because most researchers work long, flexible, and irregular hours. Training will be given on research procedures, as well as equipment used within our usability testing facilities. Indeed, training given will be in all aspects of research which will lead you to the stage of reasonable research independence, an ability to consider research problems, design, execute and assess experimental programmes, formulate new hypotheses and ideas, and discuss your research with colleagues including leading scientists in the field.  It should also allow you to become highly proficient in verbal and written communication of science, have an understanding of key issues such as supervising junior staff and students, broad aspects of your field, relevant methodologies, seeking funding, publishing scientific data, and some knowledge of intellectual property, public opinion and engagement in science, careers and opportunities in science. Many of these skills will equip you well for a career in science in academia or industry, but they also transferable to many other professions, and a PhD is excellent training for many jobs/careers, not just academic science.

In the first instance email your CV/Resume with a covering letter explaining your suitability for PhD study to weo-project@cs.manchester.ac.uk

For more information on the PhD Programmes:
Doctoral Training Centre (CDT) – http://cdt.cs.manchester.ac.uk/programme/
General PhD Programmes – http://www.cs.manchester.ac.uk/phd/programmes/phd/
Split Site PhD Programmes – http://www.graduateeducation.eps.manchester.ac.uk/admin/phd/

WordPress Shortcodes Point the Way to Declarative Web Language

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Chromed Up WordPress Logo

Wordpress Shortcodes: Towards a Declarative Web Language?

You may have heard me banging on about declarative Web languages…

I contest that in the near future it will not be possible for an untrained author, to simply read a small specification of the language, open a text editor and create a page; simply uploading the result to the Web…I am not suggesting a “Luddite” like, return to the old days of Web authoring, but instead, am calling for a simplified all-in-one Web language (either declarative or meta) which can be learnt in a short amount of time, by untrained programmers, who can use a text editor as the creation tool. I realise that the complexities will need in some degree to be hidden, but assert that this trade-off will neither be missed or required by the majority of authors working predominantly in the “long tail”.

Now, one good example of the kind of thing I’ve seen recently relating to this are WordPress Shortcodes. These are written by providing a handler function. Shortcode handlers are broadly similar to WordPress filters: they accept parameters (attributes) and return a result (the shortcode output). Some examples:

[gallery]

[gallery id="123" size="medium"]

// [bartag foo="foo-value"]
function bartag_func($atts) {
extract(shortcode_atts(array(
'foo' => 'no foo',
'bar' => 'default bar',
), $atts));

return "foo = {$foo}";
}
add_shortcode('bartag', 'bartag_func');

What do I mean be declarative? Well a procedural programming language provides a programmer a means to define precisely each step in the performance of a task. The programmer knows what is to be accomplished and provides through the language step-by-step instructions on how the task is to be done.  Now a declarative programming expresses what needs to be done, without prescribing how to do it in terms of sequences of actions to be taken. So in this case the declarative keywords are backed up by more complex procedural components however the blogger never needs to see these. They can avail themselves of the declarative shortcode and expect output to be generated in whatever way the procedural code says – they just say what they want and where they want it.

So if we took the shortcodes view of things how would we do something like generate an initial layout and then refer back to generated components of that layout… hum let me think.