In this paper, we introduce an integrated approach to the development of spatial hypertext. This approach brings together several theories and techniques concerning semantic structures, and streamlines the transformation from implicit semantic structures to a semantic space rendered in virtual reality. Browsing and querying become natural, inherent, and compatible activities within the same semantic space. The overall design principle is based on the theory of cognitive maps. Techniques such as latent semantic indexing, Pathfinder network scaling, and virtual reality modelling are used in harmony. The value of this integrated approach is discussed based on initial results of a recent empirical study, which suggests that the spatial metaphor is intuitive and particularly useful when dealing with implicit information structures, or when a highly flexible and extensible virtual environment is required. Search strategies in association with the spatial hypertext and further work are also discussed.

This paper presents two hyperlink analysis-based algorithms to find relevant pages for a given Web page (URL). The first algorithm comes from the extended cocitation analysis of the Web pages. It is intuitive and easy to implement. The second one takes advantage of linear algebra theories to reveal deeper relationships among the Web pages and to identify relevant pages more precisely and effectively. The experimental results show the feasibility and effectiveness of the algorithms. These algorithms could be used for various Web applications, such as enhancing Web search. The ideas and techniques in this work would be helpful to other Web-related researches.

Movement, or mobility, is key to the accessibility, design, and usability of many hypermedia resources (websites); and key to good mobility is context and preview by probing. This is especially the case for visually impaired users when a hypertext anchor is inaccurately described or is described out of context. This means confusion and disorientation. Mobility is similarly reduced when the link target of the anchor has no relationship to the expected information present on the hypertext node (web-page). We suggest that confident movement with purpose, ease, and accuracy can only be achieved when complete contextual information and an accurate description of the proposed destination (preview) are available. Our past work (1) deriving mobility heuristics from mobility models, (2) transforming web-pages based on these heuristics, and (3) building tools to analyse and access these transformed pages; has shown us that a tool to expand context and preview would be useful. In this paper we describe the development of such a middleware tool to automatically and dynamically annotate web-pages with additional context information present within the page, and preview information present within hypertext link destinations found on the page.

This paper presents two studies of the use of the WWW in Scottish universities and American land-grant universities. First, we investigated the relationship between the organisational profile of a university department in Scotland and its structural connectivity on the WWW. A Spearman rank order correlation analysis revealed a number of strong correlation relationships between structural connectivity measures and the organisational profile based on research assessment exercise ratings, teaching quality assessments, student--staff ratios and funding levels. Linkage patterns from 13 Scottish academic sites to commercial sites in Britain and America highlighted the impact of culture and the appropriateness of information technologies on the acceptance of the WWW. The second study is a content survey of WWW-based education activities in American land-grant universities to investigate successful applications of these enabling techniques in education. The two studies together highlighted cultural, political and technological interactions in the use of the WWW.

The `Towel' project seeks to find solutions to problems encountered by both visually impaired and sighted users when travelling in the World Wide Web by leveraging solutions found in real-world mobility and applying them to the virtual world. Visually impaired users find mobility on the Web particularly difficult because of the reliance of hypermedia on visual layout and large viewable areas that facilitate and enhance sighted mobility. Hypertext design and usability has traditionally concentrated upon navigation to facilitate this mobility; consequently other aspects of travel are neglected and web mobility has suffered. Similarly, the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) Guidelines do not take a holistic view of travel and therefore in both these cases a fully rounded view of mobility cannot be formulated. This paper presents the basis for these assertions by drawing analogies between real-world and virtual-world mobility, and then attempts to substantiate these analogies by conducting a pilot study of virtual mobility on a focus group of both sighted and visually impaired web users. Knowledge of the differences in travel between visually impaired and sighted people will enable the design of better user agents and web content for visually impaired users as well as the sighted community.

Abstract. Visually impaired users are hindered in their efforts to access the largest repository of electronic information in the world – the World Wide Web (Web). The web is visually-centric with regard to presentation and information order / layout, this can (and does) hinder users who need presentation-agnostic access to information. Transcoding can help to make information more accessible via a restructuring of pages. We describe an approach based on annotation of web pages, encoding semantic information that can then be used by tools in order to manipulate and present web pages in a form that provides easier access to content. Annotations are made directly to style sheet information, allowing the annotation of large numbers of similar pages with little effort. 1

This paper describes MELISA - MEdical Literature Search Agent -- a prototype of an ontology-based information retrieval agent. We have designed a modular system that can be easily adapted to another medical literature sources or other professional domains. The major issues are the design of an architecture with three levels of abstraction, the use of separated ontologies and query models, and the definition of some aggregation operators to combine results from different queries.

This paper seeks to address these issues by extending current guidelines and design methods to include the real-world mobility concepts of orientation, memory, environment, preview and the purpose of the task at hand

A high quality of free movement, or mobility, is key to the accessibility, design, and usability of many `common-use' hypermedia resources (Web sites) and key to good mobility is context and preview. This is especially the case when a hypertext anchor is inaccurately described or is described out of context as confusion and disorientation can ensue. Mobility is similarly reduced when the link target of the anchor has no relationship to the expected information present on the hypertext node (Web page). Confident movement with purpose, ease, and accuracy can only be achieved when complete contextual information and an accurate description of the proposed destination (preview) are available. We suggest that sighted people can benefit from additional context and preview information included in hyperlinks and disprove the empirical evidence that suggests these users do not benefit from link descriptions which have this enhanced information. We briefly describe a middleware system to automatically expand context and preview in link descriptions thereby `fixing' terse links, links out of context, and inaccurate or inadequate preview information. Finally, we conduct a formative evaluation which shows us that a system to expand context and preview would be useful in different ways depending on the type of link.

This report is broken down into four main sections, firstly giving the primary aims of the proposed research, followed by a review of background reading of present Information Visualisation (IV) techniques, which are categorised using an existing framework. This is followed by a description of the general visualisation problem we are concerned with plus a description of the specific area where such a visualisation could be of benefit. We then discuss the visualisation techniques that address situations that have the greatest similarity to our own problem, and explain why they still lack suitability for our purposes. Then, two prototypes that are under development are described, and the report finishes with a breakdown of proposed future work