the internet encyclopedia volume phần 6 pdf

Changing Forms of Information Technology as a Medium for The travel industry is the world’s largest industry, ex-ceeding $4.5 trillion in gross output World Travel and Tourism Council [W

R EFERENCES 457CONCLUSION

As the Internet becomes an even more critical channel for

businesses to reach out to consumers, the value of a

well-leveraged trademark has never been higher At the same

time, the pressures on trademark owners from infringing

activities are requiring them to be ever more vigilant in

their policing and prosecution of violators In response to

these pressures, courts and lawmakers have expanded and

clarified traditional trademark protections, adding greatly

to the remedies available to trademark owners who feel

their rights have been violated In this chapter, I have

cov-ered the fundamentals of trademark law and applied to the

unique new situations presented by Internet technologies

Although the trademark space will continue to evolve, it

is clear that the value of trademarks is as well-recognized

as ever in the history of commerce

If there is one conclusion to be drawn, it is that marks are a complex field of law and procedure, requir-

trade-ing expert guidance to provide maximum opportunity and

protection This chapter provides readers with a general

overview of many current issues in trademark law, but it is

not a substitute for qualified legal counsel As I have noted

repeatedly throughout the chapter, successful use of

trade-mark law depends on many detailed analyses and

proce-dural hurdles and requires a significant commitment of

time and resources to take full advantage Trademark law

provides robust protections to those who, with assistance

from talented counsel, seek to protect their goods and

ser-vices in the marketplace

GLOSSARY

Blurring At type of dilution in which the distinctiveness

of a mark is weakened through its identification withdissimilar goods

Deep linking Creating a Web page link that is tied

di-rectly to a document deep within the page hierarchy

of a Web site, rather than simply linking to the mainhome page of the site

Dilution A lessening of the value of a famous trademark

caused by an unauthorized use of the mark, regardless

of whether any actual confusion, deception, or mistakeoccurred

Distinctiveness The ability of a mark to distinguish the

goods and services of the mark own from the goodsand services of another

Domain name An alphanumeric electronic address on

the Internet

designation under 35 USC§1125(c).

Lanham Act Also known as the Trademark Act of 1946,

it created a set of federal rules for governing the cess of registering trademarks and established certainnationwide legal protections for trademark

pro-Likelihood of confusion The test of trademark

in-fringement under the Lanham Act A likelihood of fusion exists if a substantial number of reasonablyprudent consumers are likely to be confused as to thesource of the goods or services

con-Infringement Use of a trademark in a way that is so

sim-ilar to the owner’s usage that an average consumer will

be deceived, will mistake the infringing good for the

original, or will experience confusion over the nature

or origin of the product

Initial interest confusion The use of another’s mark in a manner reasonably calculated to capture ini-tial consumer attention, even though no actual sale isfinally completed as a result of the confusion

trade-Intellectual property A set of legal theories that nize property rights in intangible things such as ideasand intellectual creations

recog-Meta tags Hidden codes embedded in Web pages thatcontain key words related to the contents of a particu-lar page, designed to be seen only by search engines

Secondary meaning An association that has developed

in the public’s mind between the mark or trade dress

of a product and owner of the mark or product

Service mark A mark that is used to identify a service orthe provider of a service rather than a tangible product,such as the name of a consulting firm or the name of aproprietary analytical process used by that consultingfirm

Tarnishment A type of dilution in which the mark isused in an unflattering light, such as by associating itwith inferior or distasteful products or services

Trademark A mark that is used by a manufacturer ormerchant to identify the origin or ownership of goodsand to distinguish them from others and the use ofwhich is protected by law

Trade dress The overall image of a product, composed

of the nonfunctional elements of its design, packaging,

or labeling, including specific colors or color tions, a distinctive package shape, or specific symbols

combina-or design elements

U.S Patent and Trademark Office The federal agencycharged with managing the nationwide issuance ofpatents and registration of trademarks

CROSS REFERENCES

See Copyright Law; Cyberlaw: The Major Areas, ment, and Provisions; Internet Literacy; Legal, Social and Ethical Issues; Patent Law.

Develop-REFERENCES

Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act of 1999(ACPA) (15 U.S.C.§1129) Retrieved May 9, 2003, from

http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/15/1129.htmlBicknell, C (1999) Making a mint on wallstreet.com

Wired News Retrieved December 1, 2002, from http://

www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,19285,00.htmlBrookfield Communications, Inc., v West Coast Enter-tainment Corp., 174 F.3d 1036 (9th Cir 1999).Coca-Cola Co v Gemini Rising, Inc., 346 F Supp 1183(E.D.N.Y 1972)

Hormel Foods Corp v Jim Henson Productions, 73 F.3d

497 (2d Cir 1996)

ICANN Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy (2001).Retrieved December 1, 2002, from http://www.icann.org/udrp/udrp.htm

Intermatic Incorporated v Toeppen, 947 F.Supp 1227(N.D Ill 1996) Retrieved December 1, 2002, fromhttp://www.jmls.edu/cyber/cases/intermat.html

Nissan Motor Co., Ltd v Nissan Computer Corp., 61

U.S.P.Q.2d 1839 (C.D Cal., 2002)

Nissan Computer Corporation keeps domain name, for

now (2002) OfficialSpin.com Retrieved December 1,

2002, from http://www.officialspin.com/main.php3?

action=recent&rid=405

Oppedahl & Larson v Advanced Concepts, et al., Civ No

97-CV-1592 (D.C Colo., 1997) Retrieved December 1,

2002, from from http://www.patents.com/ac

Panavision Int’l, L.P v Toeppen, 945 F Supp 1296 (C.D

Cal 1996) Retrieved December 1, 2002, from http://

http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/15/1051.html

United States Patent and Trademark Office (n.d.) marks Retrieved April 15, 2003, from http://www.

Trade-uspto.gov/main/trademarks.htmZatarains, Inc v Oak Grove Smokehouse, Inc., 698 F.2d

786 (5th Cir 1983)

Travel and Tourism

Daniel R Fesenmaier, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign Ulrike Gretzel, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign Yeong-Hyeon Hwang, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign Youcheng Wang, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign

Structure of the Industry and the Role of

Trend #1 The Continuing Speed andSophistication of Information Technology 469

Trend #2 Continuing Growth in the Use andUses of Information Technology in Tourism 469Trend #3 Changing Forms of Information

Technology as a Medium for

The travel industry is the world’s largest industry,

ex-ceeding $4.5 trillion in gross output (World Travel and

Tourism Council [WTTC], 2002) Recent reports from the

World Travel and Tourism Council indicate that tourism

employs over 198 million people worldwide, or

approx-imately 7.8% of the global workforce The emergence of

travel as a significant economic activity began after World

War II as travel became widely accessible to the general

population As shown in Table 1, very few people traveled

internationally in 1950 as measured by today’s standards

Yet, from 1950 to 1970, international travel exploded,

in-creasing by more than 550%! This growth in international

travel continued through the 1980s and 1990s to reach

over 450 million visitor arrivals in 2001, representing over

$260 billion (U.S dollars) in expenditures Since 1990

international travel has increased over 50%, and for a

number of countries it has grown to be their largest

com-modity in international trade Indeed, the travel industry

now serves as one of the top three industries for almost

every country worldwide (Goeldner & Ritchie, 2002)

Information technology has played a central role inthe growth and development of the tourism industry In

the early years of mass global tourism (from the 1950s

to the 1970s), the technology used was largely limited to

computer systems that supported the internal functions of

large operators in the transportation, hotel, and food

ser-vice sectors Also, a number of central reservation systems

(CRSs) and global distribution systems (GDSs)—Sabre,

Amadeus, Galileo and Worldspan—were developed to

enable travel agencies (and other similar intermediaries)

to directly access schedule and pricing information and

to request reservations for clients These intermediaries

became the primary users of travel information systems,

thus providing important links between travelers andindustry players (World Tourism Organization BusinessCouncil [WTOBC], 1999)

During the late 1980s and early 1990s these systemsand the information they contained emerged as impor-tant strategic tools, enabling system operators such asAmerican Airlines and Hilton Hotels to grow and success-fully position themselves within the overall travel mar-ket The work of Mayros and Werner (1982) and Wiseman(1985) describes this significant development in the traveland tourism industry An important characteristic of thegrowth of these systems was the inclusion of detailedbehavioral information about each customer, includingdemographic characteristics, travel history, travel pref-erences, and responses to marketing/promotional pro-grams Armed with this information, existing systemswere significantly enhanced and a variety of new systemswere developed, which provided the basis for the emer-gence of a number of new approaches for managingtourism enterprises (Poon, 1993) As a consequence, therelationships of firms and organizations within the travelindustry changed dramatically, placing emphasis on ob-taining and distributing customer-related information aswell as expanding strategic relationships in order to morefully exploit various business opportunities within thetravel value chain

The success of central reservation systems and globaldistribution systems paved the way for the Internet,enabling the travel and tourism industry to quickly ex-ploit its many strengths Indeed, in many ways the In-ternet is ideal for the travel and tourism industry As acommunication tool, it is simultaneously business- andconsumer-oriented The Internet is business-oriented be-cause it enables businesses to communicate with poten-tial visitors more easily and efficiently and allows them

459

Table 1 World Tourism Growth

International Tourism International Tourist Year Arrivals (millions) Receipts a (billions US$)

Source: World Tourism Organization (2001).

a International transport receipts excluded.

to better support and immediately respond to customer

information needs through the provision of interactive

travel brochures, virtual tours, and virtual travel

commu-nities In addition, the Internet enables tourism-related

enterprises to communicate with their partners more

effectively in order to develop and design offers that meet

the individual needs of potential visitors The Internet is

customer-oriented in that it empowers the user to easily

access a wealth of information, enabling the traveler to

almost “sample” the destination prior to an actual visit

Moreover, emerging ecommerce capabilities enable the

traveler to make reservations, purchase tourism-related

products, and share trip experiences with others

Today, the Internet is one of the most important

com-munication tools for travelers as well as travel and tourism

enterprises For example, recent studies by the Travel

Industry Association of America (TIA) (2002a) indicate

that almost one-third (31%) of American adults use the

Internet to search for travel information and/or make

reservations (see Table 2); for American travelers, this

figure increases to 45% Recent studies also show that

the travel and tourism industry responded to the

emer-gence of Internet-based technologies by adopting a

num-ber of new and innovative ways to communicate with

consumers, as well as with other industry partners As

such, the travel and tourism industry is one of the most

significant users of Internet technology as measured by

Table 2 Internet Use for Travel Planning: 1997–2002

Year % of U.S Adults % of U.S Travelers

This chapter presents an overview of many of the uses

of the Internet by travelers and the firms and tions that compose the travel and tourism industry Thenext section provides a brief synopsis of the structure ofthe industry and the role of Internet technologies, focus-ing on four major sectors: hotels, airlines, travel agents(and related intermediaries), and destination marketingorganizations (DMOs) Following this introduction to theuse of Internet-based technologies in travel and tourism,emerging marketing and management strategies areconsidered and various issues related to the developmentand use of Web sites and online management informationsystems are discussed The subsequent section focuses onthe role of the Internet from the travelers’ perspective

organiza-A variety of consumer-related technologies are ered, including travel “brochure” Web sites, virtual tours,and mobile devices As part of the discussion, changingpatterns of use and their impact on the travel experienceare considered The last section of this chapter identifiesfive global technology-related trends affecting the futurerole of the Internet in travel and tourism In addition,some possible ways in which the Internet will shape thefuture of the travel and tourism industry are discussed

consid-THE TRAVEL AND TOURISM INDUSTRY

Structure of the Industry and the Role

of Information Technologies

The travel and tourism industry can be characterized

as comprising all organizations that are involved in theproduction and distribution of travel and tourism prod-ucts It can be viewed as an umbrella industry (seeFigure 1) containing a set of interrelated businesses, such

as transportation companies, accommodation facilities,attractions, catering enterprises, tour operators, travelagents, and providers of recreation and leisure facilities(Werthner & Klein, 1999) To respond effectively to thedynamic character of the industry, information must beable to flow among the clients, intermediaries, and each

of the suppliers involved in serving the clients’ needs As

a result, information technology (IT) has become an most universal distribution platform for the tourism in-dustry IT reduces the cost of each transaction by minimiz-ing print, coordination, communication, and distributioncosts It also allows short-notice changes, supports one-to-one interaction with the customer, and enables organi-zations to reach a broad audience (Poon, 1993) However,the Internet has not affected all sectors equally Certainsectors such as airlines have been aggressive adopters oftechnology, using it to help manage and streamline their

al-T HE T RAVEL AND T OURISM I NDUSTRY 461

Travelagent

Touroperator

Incomingagent

Hotelchain

CRS/GDS

Consumers

Suppliers

DMO, Planners &

Note: NGO= Non-Governmental Organization NTO= National Tourism Organization

RTO= Regional Tourism Organization LTO= Local Tourism OrganizationCRS= Central Reservation System GDS= Global Distribution System

Figure 1: The travel and tourism industry and the Internet Source: Werthner & Klein

(1999) Reprinted with permission

operations and to gain strategic advantages (McGuffie,

1994) Others, such as the hotel sector, have been less

enthusiastic and have only recently begun to take

advan-tage of many of the benefits that the technology can bring

(Connolly & Olsen, 1999) Many traditional travel

agen-cies are also lagging behind other sectors in terms of

tech-nological adaptation, and it is increasingly evident that

experienced consumers are often better informed than

professional advisors However, given the way in which

information technology is reshaping the basic structure

of both commerce and society in general, its importance

to the success of all types of tourism companies can only

grow in the future As a result, tourism companies have

changed dramatically the way in which they conduct their

business and are under pressure to invest further in new

technology in order to maintain their competitiveness

Hotels

The hotel industry bases much of its distribution on

di-rect contact with customers (WTOBC, 1999) Historically,

hotels have distributed information through print-based

media such as brochures, travel planners or regional

guides, and received reservations by mail, phone, and fax

More recently, hotel rooms have been made accessible for

booking through global distribution systems (GDSs) and

through direct access to hotels using central reservation

systems (CRS) However, such technologies have been

in-adequate as customers have traditionally not had access to

these systems and travel intermediaries have experienced

difficulty and delay in finding and booking

appropri-ate hotels, whereas hotels have experienced high clerical

costs attracting and processing bookings from customers

The emergence of new information and communication

technologies (i.e., Internet technologies) presents new

opportunities to make these processes more accessibleand more efficient

The use of the Internet in the hotel industry is growingexponentially and this enables hotels to reconsider theway they are doing business Although the hotel sectoroverall has been slow to use the Internet as compared toother industry sectors (Connolly, Olson, & Moore, 1998),many hotel managers are becoming increasingly aware

of the potential distribution, promotion, and interactivemarketing advantages of the Internet The Internet offersseveral advantages for hotels of all sizes One of the ad-vantages is increased effectiveness due to cost reductionand revenue growth Another advantage is higher qualitycustomer relationships due to the possibility of per-sonal contact services and dialogue with the customer(Morrison, Taylor, Morrison, & Morrison, 1999; Sterne,1999) For example, customers can answer questionsabout their personal preferences for rooms, and based onthis information, a customer receives services at the hotelthat are adapted to his/her preferences

It is now generally agreed that Internet-related nologies are the single greatest force driving change inthe hotel industry and will continue to have dramatic andsweeping implications on how hotels conduct business

tech-in the future Hotels are expected to position themselvesstrongly on the Internet to take advantage of its distri-bution capabilities such as reach, content dissemination,feedback collection, interactivity, and one-to-one market-ing Further, current trends indicate that this greater in-volvement in IT by the hotel industry will increasinglyencompass customer-centric approaches to capitalize onthe cost structure and long-term potential of the Internetwhile at the same time differentiating products and build-ing lasting value propositions

Air transportation systems worldwide are being

dramat-ically affected by technological developments Many of

these developments focus on the use of Internet

tech-nology to improve the efficiency of operations (Sheldon,

1997) The first applications of computer technology to

airline operations emerged in the 1950s when central

reservation systems (CRSs) were designed The primary

function of computerized airline reservation systems was

to simplify the process of booking flights by allowing

travel agents to find relevant flight information and make

reservations directly from their terminals without

hav-ing to call airline reservations offices (Klein & Langenohl,

1994) Because of their many operational and cost-related

advantages, CRSs became essential for the distribution of

airline tickets through travel agencies

Until the mid 1970s, airline computer reservation

sys-tems were used only for proprietary airline information

and the major airline companies all had their own CRSs

(Sheldon, 1997) Some of the CRSs were combined to

become global distribution systems (GDSs), which

pro-vided multiple carrier information and constituted

im-portant electronic distribution channels The major GDSs

include Galileo, Amadeus, Sabre, and Worldspan, and

these are now available through the Internet These

air-line reservation systems provide a number of

function-alities to travel agencies including flight schedules and

availability, passenger information, fare quotes and rules,

and ticketing Most of the systems now also enable

con-sumers to view schedules, fares, and fare rules and to

book flights In addition to developing reservation systems

as the predominant distribution channel, many airlines

have invested heavily in information systems to

auto-mate other areas of airline operations and management,

which can be categorized into two sections: (1) systems for

streamlining operations such as baggage and cargo

han-dling systems, cabin automation, and safety systems, and

(2) decision support systems to aid in decision-making

related to flight scheduling and planning, crew

schedul-ing and management, gate management, and departure

control

Travel Agencies/Online Intermediaries

Travel agencies are intermediaries that arrange and

dis-tribute travel information to individual travelers, with

some agencies specializing in certain market segments or

products In addition, many travel agencies function as

tour operators, designing their own package tours and

selling them either directly to the traveler or through

other agents Travel agencies use information intensely

and therefore need IT to process that information In

fact, information on travel products, destinations,

sched-ules, fares, rates, and availability is their most important

product and defines their existence The more

informa-tion a travel agency can access electronically, the more

timely, accurate, and efficient services it can provide to its

clients

The most prevalent application of IT in travel

agen-cies is the GDS terminal, which was first placed in travel

agent offices by major airlines to facilitate airline bookings

in the 1970s (Sheldon, 1997) GDS terminals are still the

major information and booking tools used by travel agentsfor all types of travel products However, the advent ofthe Internet has significantly changed the way travel andtourism products are distributed Increasingly, consumerscan access information online and travel agents have beenforced to adapt to this change Travel agents have an am-bivalent relationship with the Internet because it can be

a threat in that it makes products available directly to theconsumer and yet it also provides additional business op-portunities Many travel agencies offer services on the In-ternet, giving them a much broader geographic consumerbase than if they operated in traditional ways They canreceive bookings from clients through the Internet andcan even book the passenger on flights without issuingpaper tickets Travel agents can also use the Internet as aresearch tool, and this might be particularly important inthe future as some travel products become available onlyvia the Internet In addition, IT applications can be used

by travel agencies to create value-added products or vices through the online provision of their travel expertise

ser-in combser-ination with the wider range of travel productsand services available on the Internet However, realizingthat physical location is irrelevant in today’s electronicmarketplace, new types of travel agencies which existonly on the Internet, such as Expedia and Travelocity, areemerging and continue to raise the level of competitionamong travel agencies

Destination Marketing Organizations

Destination marketing organizations (DMOs) are cally not-for-profit, small and medium-sized, information-intensive organizations that perform a wide range ofactivities to coordinate the diverse components of thetourism industry (Gartrell, 1988) DMOs act as a liaison,collecting and providing information to both the con-sumer and the industry in order to facilitate tourism pro-motion and development of a specific area

typi-In general, destination marketing organizations havebeen slow to adopt IT in their operations and marketingactivities It was not until the late 1980s that computer sys-tems were adopted by the larger DMOs to enhance publi-cations and information operations and, to a lesser extent,

to support reservation services During the late 1990s,

as desktop computing technologies became more widelyavailable, DMOs began to use IT more extensively Moreand more DMO directors realized that Internet market-ing was an inseparable, often critical part of their overallmarketing endeavor They have since developed a highlevel of interest in the Internet because the use of theInternet offers the potential to reach a large number ofconsumers at relatively low cost and provides informa-tion of greater depth and quality than traditional media Inother words, using Internet technology enables DMOs topromote their destinations’ tourism products and servicesbetter, present associated organizations more equally, andcollect customer information for effective customer re-lationship management (CRM) More importantly, theInternet allows them to improve business processes, con-duct marketing research, provide customer service, andfacilitate destination management and planning with lessdependency on time and space

T HE T RAVEL AND T OURISM I NDUSTRY 463

Despite this potential, DMOs have not been larly quick in establishing a sophisticated Internet pres-

particu-ence Several factors have contributed to the current

status of DMOs’ Internet strategy One factor is related

to the complex structure and relationships of the various

constituents DMOs represent The travel and tourism

industry has a very complex structure, with a large

per-centage of the organizations classified as small

busi-nesses (Gartrell, 1988) Among the DMOs’ constituents

are marketing organizations at different levels, suppliers,

and distributors Although each entity maintains critical

relationships with other entities in order to deliver the

desired products and services, the enormousness of this

diverse industry as well as the different benefits these

con-stituents are seeking make the job of DMOs complex and

difficult

The unique characteristics of the Internet and thecapabilities required of DMOs for implementing effective

Internet marketing have also been identified as important

influences Marketing is a creative and adaptive discipline

that requires constant regeneration and transformation in

accordance with changes in the environment (Brownlie,

Saren, Whittinton, & Wensley, 1994; Cronin, 1995) Thus,

conventional marketing activities cannot be implemented

on the Internet in their present form (Hoffman & Novak,

1996) For Internet marketing strategies to be

success-ful, DMOs have to be aware of the capabilities and

char-acteristics of the Internet and need to start developing

new marketing concepts and paradigms, because the

In-ternet presents a fundamentally different environment

for marketing activities than traditional media (Connolly

& Sigala, 2001) Despite these problems and challenges,

DMOs have begun to recognize the opportunities that

emerge from using the special features of the new

medium, in particular the interactivity and multimedia

capabilities it provides As a result, the number of DMO

Web sites is rising rapidly, offering online destination

in-formation with increasing quality and functionality

Emerging Marketing and

Management Strategies

The adoption of information technology has transformed

the way in which the tourism industry conducts

busi-ness With the assistance of new technology, especially the

Internet, new opportunities have emerged for tourism

or-ganizations, which enable them to market their travel

products and services and manage their daily business

activities more effectively In particular, innovative

mar-keting and management strategies have evolved in the

areas of Web development, Web advertising/promotion,

e-commerce activities, customer relationship

manage-ment, and the use of online destination management

systems

Web Site Development

Hanson (2000) observed that there are three major stages

in Web site development: (I) publishing, (II) database

re-trieval, and (III) personalized interaction Stage I sites

provide the same information to all users Though a Stage

I site can contain thousands of pages, pictures, sound, and

video, it is limited in the dialogue it affords between the

travel Web site and the user because it only broadcastsinformation from the Web site to the viewer Modern Webtools make Stage I travel Web sites easy and inexpensive

to develop in that almost any document can be convertedand moved online

With experience and investment, the travel tion moves to Stage II Web sites, which combine thepublishing power of Stage I with the ability to retrieveinformation in response to user requests The responsesare dynamically turned into Web pages or e-mail In-teractivity and dialogue have started, although this ac-tivity is limited to a series of “ask–respond” interac-tions However, the ability to use Web sites as points ofaccess to images, sound, and databases is particularlyvaluable

organiza-A Stage III travel Web site dynamically creates a pagecatering to an individual customer It moves beyond

an “ask–respond” interaction into a dialogue and mayanticipate user choices and suggest possible alternatives

A Stage III travel Web site does more than just react torequests typed into forms or selected by clicking on animage It requires the capabilities of Stages I and II plusthe customization of content and functions to the needs

of a specific user

Destination marketing organizations use Web-basedtechnologies in different ways and with varying intensity,owing to different backgrounds, financial resources, andmarketing objectives (Yuan & Fesenmaier, 2000) SomeDMOs are at a preliminary stage of utilizing Web tech-nologies for marketing activities, and these Web sites aretypically only used to broadcast information by providingbrochure-like information Others are more advanced andsophisticated in this regard, taking advantage of Web tech-nologies to make business activities more effective and ef-ficient, or even to re-engineer whole business practices.More advanced DMO Web sites typically include moresophisticated capabilities such as interactive queries andrequest forms, personalization, and recommendationfunctions

Web Advertising/Promotion

The Internet is an almost pure manifestation of ing principles and practices (Inkpen, 1998) It is a tourismmarketer’s dream because (1) it enables travel companies

market-of different sizes to compete on more equal terms and(2) it allows a travel company to open up a direct andpotentially personalized channel of communication withits customers In other words, travel companies of all sizesare much more equal in their competition for consumers’attention on the Internet Travel is the most importantbusiness on the Web in terms of the volume of adver-tising and promotion (eMarketer, 1999) It is also mostlikely to generate revenues and achieve profits through itsWeb presence However, in order to be successful in Webadvertising/promotion, tourism organizations have real-ized that the Web is a medium that combines the elements

of other media Hoffman and Novak (1996) describe thenew form of communication that the Internet provides

as an “interactive multimedia many-to-many

communi-cation model” where interactivity can also be with the medium in addition to through the medium Travel and

tourism fit especially well with interactive media because

they constitute an information intensive industry where

transactions can be rather easily made online

E-commerce Activities

Before the onset of the Internet, electronic commerce

was usually conducted over a proprietary network

con-necting a group of organizations such as airline

compa-nies, travel agents, and hotels with each other through

CRSs or GDSs The nature of the transaction was purely

business-to-business Tourism businesses now use the

In-ternet as a means of redefining their focus, creating new

products, finding new distribution channels, and creating

new markets For example, the major airline sites now

offer customer reservations, electronic tickets, seat

selec-tion, in-flight merchandise, and reward points; in

addi-tion, some of the airlines have enhanced their sites to

offer lodging, transportation-package deals, and cruises

through their alliance partners (Harrell Associates,

2002)

The use of the Internet in the travel and tourism

indus-try has also been driven by the convergent forces of the

shift of consumer behavior toward more intensive uses

of online environments and the successful adaptation of

marketing and sales strategies by the industry For many

consumers, online booking of travel is already the norm,

and this can only be expected to strengthen in the

imme-diate future Travel is a product that online consumers

want to purchase; indeed, according to Forrester

Research (1999), it is the product that those who are

online, but have not yet purchased online, want to

pur-chase most From the point of view of travel and tourism

suppliers, however, there is some reticence from certain

sectors of the industry, such as the cruise line industry, to

compete directly with their traditional intermediaries by

making the move to direct sales, whereas others, such as

the airline industry, have embraced the new online

chan-nels with great enthusiasm

E-commerce solutions are gaining momentum and

are expanding beyond reservations to include

supply-chain management (e.g., procurement), internal business

applications through intranets, and other

business-to-business transactions as well as business-to-business-to-customer

sales It is certain that the Internet will continue to become

faster, more reliable and secure, and also more

feature-rich In addition, it will become more mobile through

portable devices such as personal digital assistants (PDAs)

and cell phones that can communicate with ambient

in-telligent devices embedded in appliances and will

increas-ingly be enabled by speech, thus truly giving customers

anytime, anywhere access in a format conducive to their

needs

Customer Relationship Management

Customer relationship management (CRM) is a

man-agerial philosophy that calls for the reconfiguration of

the travel organization’s activities around the customer

Successful CRM strategies evolve out of the ability to

ef-fectively capture exhaustive data about existing and

po-tential customers, to profile them accurately, to identify

their individual needs and idiosyncratic expectations, and

to generate actionable customer knowledge that can be

distributed for ad hoc use at the point of contact (Newell,

2000) Further, the success of CRM initiatives is dent on the ability to collect, store, and aggregate largeamounts of customer information from various sources.One of the major driving forces of CRM using the Internet

depen-is the ability to target each individual interactively Withthe Internet, individuals and travel marketers can inter-act, and this direct interaction creates customer value andsets the stage for relationship building Travel marketerscontinue to seek ways for compiling accurate databases

of personal information such as sociodemographic, cioeconomic, geographic, and behavioral characteristicsfor potential customers Such a database creates a wealth

so-of relationship marketing opportunities Crucial to theestablishment of such comprehensive customer databases

is the ability to use software agents, without human vention, to collect, categorize, and store large amounts ofpersonal customer information in a cost effective man-ner for later data mining A second important issue is theability to collect the desired information directly from theprimary source rather than having to purchase it from sec-ondary sources such as travel and tourism consultants

inter-Online Destination Management Systems

The term “destination management system” (DMS) hascome into use in recent years to describe the IT infrastruc-ture of a destination marketing organization and may bedefined in a number of ways depending on the capabilities

of the system Increasingly, a DMS is regarded as having tosupport multiple functions An integrated DMS supportsnot only the DMO’s Web site, but also a wide range of otherpromotion, marketing, and sales applications (Sheldon,1997) These might include the design and production

of printed materials, tourist information center services(for information and reservations), call center services,kiosks, database marketing, project/event management,and marketing research DMSs can greatly enhance atravel destination’s Web presence by integrating informa-tion from various suppliers and intermediaries and areincreasingly used as the informational and structural ba-sis for regional Web portal sites

TRAVELERS AND THE INTERNET

Internet technologies have not only changed the ture of tourism and its related industries They have alsohad a profound impact on the way consumers search fortourism information, construct and share tourism expe-riences, and purchase tourism products and services Incontrast to many consumer goods and services, the con-sumption of tourism experiences involves often extensivepre- and post-consumption stages, in addition to the ac-tual trip, which itself can spread over several weeks (Jeng

struc-& Fesenmaier, 2002; Moutinho, 1987) These stages of thetourism consumption process are typically information-intensive, and Internet-based technologies have come toplay a significant role in supporting consumers through-out this multistage process The specific ways in which thevarious technologies are used in the different stages de-pend on the particular communication and informationneeds they are expected to serve (see Figure 2) For in-stance, Internet technologies are used in the preconsump-tion phase to obtain information necessary for planning

T RAVELERS AND THE I NTERNET 465

PlanningExpectation Formation Decision-MakingTransactions Anticipation

ConnectionNavigationShort-Term Decision-Making On-Site Transactions

SharingDocumentationExternal Memory Re-experiencingAttachment

Figure 2: Communication and information needs in the three stages of tourism consumption.

trips, formulate correct expectations, and evaluate,

com-pare, and select alternatives, as well as to communicate

with the providers of tourism products and services to

prepare or execute transactions In contrast, the functions

served by technologies during the actual consumption of

tourism experiences are more related to being connected

and to obtaining detailed information relevant at a specific

place and moment in time During the postconsumption

phase, Internet technologies are used in ways that allow

sharing, documenting, storing, and reliving tourism

ex-periences, as well as establishing close relationships with

places, attractions, or product/service providers, as in the

case of Frequent Flyer programs For example, e-mail will

typically be used in all stages, but mainly to obtain

in-formation or make reservations in the preconsumption

phase, to stay connected with family and friends while

traveling, and to share pictures and stories with members

of one’s travel party or other individuals after concluding a

trip Although all Internet technologies are probably used

by travelers at some point or in some way, several

appli-cations have been identified as being of particular

impor-tance in the context of tourism experiences The following

provides an overview of these technologies, how they tend

to be used, and the impact they have on consumers during

the various stages of the tourism consumption process

Preconsumption

It is in the initial phase of the tourism consumption

pro-cess that most of the impacts related to Internet-based

technologies are currently experienced Consumers use

the Internet and its diverse applications in this first stage

of the tourism experience to gather information,

formu-late expectations, inform/support their decision-making,

and reserve or purchase the various components

(trans-portation, accommodation, etc.) to be consumed during

their trips

Brochureware

Brochureware refers to Web sites or Web pages

cre-ated by transferring the contents of printed tourism

brochures directly to digital environments Brochureware

was one of the first Internet applications made available

to tourism consumers, owing to the fact that tourism

businesses quickly recognized the value of the Internet

as a powerful publishing medium Web sites designed

as brochureware represent the simplest form of Web

design and completely ignore the content presentation

and communication possibilities the World Wide Web fers (Hanson, 2000) Nevertheless, brochureware is themost common way in which tourism information is cur-rently made available to consumers and, consequently,constitutes an integral part of tourism-related onlineexperiences Despite their obvious limitations, digitizedtourism brochures on the Internet still support con-sumers in that they enable potential travelers to browseand evaluate tourism products without temporal or spa-tial limitations Furthermore, even the very basic im-plementations of brochureware make use of hypertextand provide hyperlinks that allow consumers to movethrough online tourism information in ways that are typ-ically not supported by printed brochures Brochureware

of-is expected to give way to more interactive forms ofWeb site content presentation as more and more tourismbusinesses recognize the value of engaging consumers inexperiential ways

Virtual Tours

Virtual tours are tools that enable the potential consumers

of tourism products to explore and immerse themselveswithin an interactive Web environment in order to gainthe needed experiential information about a destination

or tourism establishment (Cho & Fesenmaier, 2001) Theterm “virtual tour” is widely used on the Web and canrange from a series of pictures or slide shows to stream-ing video and highly interactive virtual reality settings.The realism provided through virtual tours creates im-mersion, which, in turn, leads to immediate, direct, andreal experiences that generate a strong sense of presence

As a result of this telepresence experienced through tual tours, consumers are able to construct a more vividpicture of the tourism product and are therefore morelikely to reach well-informed decisions Thus, the signif-icance of virtual tours in the context of tourism lies inproviding consumers with an opportunity for “producttrial” before the actual purchase Tourism products are, inlarge part, experience-oriented intangible goods (Vogt &Fesenmaier, 1998) that are typically consumed at a placefar away from the point of purchase and often cannot

vir-be experienced without vir-being consumed in their entirety.Consequently, product trial is usually not available tothe potential consumers of tourism products However,tourism bears many risks because its components are con-sumed in unfamiliar environments, constitute a signifi-cant expenditure for most consumers, and typically entailhigh involvement from the part of the consumer Given

the limited opportunity for prepurchase trial in the

con-text of tourism, virtual tours, with their ability to

repre-sent tourism products and services in more realistic and

dynamic ways than other promotional materials, play a

crucial role in offering rich travel information

Travel Decision Support Systems

The term travel decision support systems (TDSS) refers

to information systems designed to simplify the

travel-decision-making process and support consumers in the

various steps involved in planning trips Trip planning

is a very complex process that consists of a number of

decisions, which often condition each other (Dellaert,

Ettema, & Lindh, 1998; Jeng & Fesenmaier, 2002;

Wood-side & MacDonald, 1994) Also, each decision requires

different kinds of information; thus, separate

informa-tion search activities are necessary This increases the cost

of the information search process for the consumer and

can often lead to information overload (Good et al., 1999;

Hibbard, 1997) The main function of a TDSS is to

iden-tify and present certain tourism products and services in

accordance with consumer preferences, thus reducing the

number of alternatives that the consumer would have to

evaluate The functionality of such systems ranges from

more sophisticated search engines and

intelligent-agent-supported information retrieval to true recommendation

systems that enable the consumer to identify

destina-tions or tourism products of interest (Vanhof & Molderez,

1994) The use of a TDSS generally requires specifying

preferences such as desired date of travel and preferred

activities In their most advanced form, these systems try

to mimic face-to-face human interactions that could

oc-cur between a consumer and a travel agent In such cases,

the TDSS is typically referred to as a travel counseling

sys-tem (Hruschka & Mazanec, 1990) Current developments

in the TDSS area focus on increasing the ability of such

systems to capture consumer preferences and adapt

in-formation accordingly, as well as to learn from past

inter-actions and support group decision-making (Delgado &

Davidson, 2002; Hwang & Fesenmaier, 2001; Loban, 1997;

Mitsche, 2001; Ricci & Werthner, 2001) Consumers can

take advantage of such systems and benefit from the

cus-tomized information presented to them at various stages

in the trip planning process However, the currently

avail-able TDSS versions are still more capavail-able of supporting

consumers with a clear understanding of what they

de-sire than helping individuals with only a vague idea of

what they are looking for It is expected that these systems

will play an increasingly important role in travel planning

as they become more human-centric in design and truly

adaptive with respect to the needs of consumers

E-commerce Applications

E-commerce applications are technologies that support

online transactions between the providers and consumers

of tourism products and services Online reservation and

payment options were quickly adopted by many suppliers

and consumers and led to the emergence of tourism as

one of the most important e-commerce categories It can

be argued that the reasons for this rapid adoption of

e-commerce in tourism lie in the particular fit between the

characteristics of tourism products and the capabilities

of e-commerce applications The purchase of related products and services typically involves the move-ment of information rather than the physical delivery ofgoods and is often concluded through credit card pay-ments Also, the complex and strictly hierarchical tourismdistribution system of pre-Internet times led to enormousinformation asymmetries and little choice for consumers

tourism-in terms of where or how to acquire tourism products.With the introduction of e-commerce, consumers wereprovided with a new means of buying that they were eager

to adopt because it not only offered more choices throughdirect links to the many geographically dispersed indus-try players or new intermediaries such as online travelagencies, but also catered to consumers by providing newlevels of convenience E-tickets, for example, are a directresult of e-commerce initiatives and have tremendouslysimplified travel, especially business travel Current de-velopments in the area of e-commerce focus primarily

on raising security and privacy standards to ensure safeand smooth transactions In addition, efforts are beingundertaken to make a wider range of tourism productsavailable online Destination management systems arebecoming more widespread and promise more extensivee-commerce adoption, thus providing consumers withgreater access to an increasing variety of tourism productsand services

Online Customer Support

Online customer support is a summary term for net technologies that allow consumers to contact the sup-pliers or distributors of tourism products if additionalinformation or other forms of assistance are needed Ap-plications that provide consumers with the means to com-municate faster and more easily in order to get supportare especially important in the context of tourism First,the special nature of tourism products and services (seeKotler, Bowen, & Makens, 1999, for a detailed description)makes them more likely to require additional support

Inter-It is very difficult to describe the many experiential pects of tourism accurately; thus consumers often requirefurther interpretation or more detailed explanations Also,tourism products and services are usually purchased or atleast reserved long before they are consumed, and manythings can potentially happen during this extensive pe-riod of commitment between travel- and tourism-relatedbusinesses and consumers

as-Second, geographical and cultural distances betweentravel and tourism suppliers and consumers render com-munication through traditional means very difficult TheInternet, on the other hand, provides consumers with fast,easy, and cost-effective ways of contacting the providers oftravel and tourism-related goods and services Technolo-gies of support include “Frequently Asked Questions” sec-tions on Web sites, online request forms, bulletin boards,Internet phones, e-mail, real-time chat options, and in-stant messaging applications These technologies are cur-rently used in very passive ways, which means consumersare required to initiate the contact However, a growingnumber of tourism organizations is adopting more proac-tive approaches to online customer support They pro-vide consumers with active assistance either through au-tomatic e-mail up-dates or by monitoring the behavior

T RAVELERS AND THE I NTERNET 467

of Web site visitors and offering real-time assistance

through instant messaging or chat if they recognize search

or click patterns that are typically associated with a need

for help, such as seemingly uncoordinated click-streams

This innovative use of online customer support

technolo-gies actively encourages consumers to communicate with

customer representatives and has the potential to

pre-vent confusion or misunderstandings instead of following

the traditional model of solving problems after they have

occurred

During Consumption

Internet technologies are used during the actual trip

mainly for travelers to stay connected and to obtain en

route information if, and only if, the need arises The

spread of Internet caf´es at tourist destinations, the

grow-ing number of accommodation establishments offergrow-ing

(often high-speed) Internet connections, and the recent

efforts of airlines to provide in-flight Internet access to

travelers indicate that a substantial need for these kinds

of information and communication links exists En route

Internet access means anywhere-and-anytime availability

of tourism-related information for consumers Therefore,

many of the trip planning and information gathering tasks

of travelers could shift from preconsumption to during

consumption and make travel much more spontaneous if

the Internet becomes more widely available to the

travel-ing public

Mobile technologies play an increasingly importantrole in tourism due to their ability to provide travel-

ers with wireless and, thus, instantaneous and pervasive

Internet access Handheld devices such as personal digital

assistants (PDAs) and cellular phones supported through

a wireless application protocol (WAP), a global system for

mobile communication (GSM), and short message service

(SMS) allow travelers to take full advantage of the

Inter-net while on the road More ambitious developments of

mobile technology go beyond simple access by providing

real-time location-based services (Eriksson, 2002; Oertel,

Steinm ¨uller, & Kuom, 2002) Empowered by geographical

information systems (GIS) and global positioning system

technology (GPS) in combination with information

avail-able on the Internet, these advanced mobile applications

identify the traveler’s location in space and the spatial

context of this position This information is then used to

generate personalized assistance in the form of

location-specific and time-sensitive information Many

advance-ments related to mobile technologies are spurred by needs

that directly arise from information and

communica-tion problems encountered during travel Projects such

as CRUMPET—creation of user-friendly mobile services

personalized for tourism (Poslad et al., 2001;

Schmidt-Belz, Makelainen, Nick, & Poslad, 2002)—and the

de-velopment of wireless-based tourism infrastructures, for

instance the ambient intelligence landscape described

by the Information Society Technologies Advisory Group

[ISTAG] (2002), are two examples of the many

ef-forts undertaken at the juncture of mobile

technol-ogy and tourism; yet they represent developments with

important implications for the future of the entire

Internet

Postconsumption

The postconsumption stage in the context of tourism,involves treasuring souvenirs, remembering special mo-ments, reliving an experience through photographs, shar-ing travel stories, and often developing a strong sense ofattachment to a specific destination Internet technologiesplay a significant role in these post-trip activities and havestarted to significantly influence memory practices as theyrelate to tourism

Virtual communities are an example of Internet plications that provide consumers with support during

ap-the postconsumption phase The term virtual community

describes a group of people who are connected throughcomputer-mediated communication technologies andshare interests and feelings in cyberspace (Rheingold,1994) Virtual travel communities, then, are communitiesfacilitated by computer-mediated communication that al-low members to conduct various types of travel-relatedtasks, such as obtaining travel information, maintainingconnections, finding travel companions, or simply havingfun by telling each other interesting travel experiences andstories (Wang, Yu, & Fesenmaier, 2002) Consumers canuse these virtual travel communities to post photographsand stories/testimonials of their trip(s) on the commu-nity Web site, where they serve as information to otherconsumers In addition to this purely functional aspect,virtual travel communities offer opportunities for mem-bers to fulfill hedonic, psychological, and social needs.Sense of belonging, fun, and self-identification are only afew of the benefits that can be derived from online com-munity membership In the context of tourism, the mostimportant function virtual travel communities serve is theextension of travel/tourism-related experiences beyondthe actual trip Used as digital substitutes for traditionalphoto albums, the digital images uploaded onto commu-nity Web pages and discussion boards help recall aspects

of trips and assist consumers in constructing memories

of vacations The travel stories and discussions that can

be found in such communities mimic real-world telling activities typical of this last stage of the tourismconsumption process

story-Tourism experiences are an integral part of the lective memory of families and peer groups and, thus,require sharing In contrast to traditional conversationsabout the adventures, fun events, or other types of memo-rable moments of past trips, communication about travelexperiences in virtual communities takes place with anaudience that has a very tailored interest in the topic andoften resides outside the boundaries of one’s usual socialcircle Also, the information posted by consumers in thecourse of the postconsumption recollection of the travelexperience serves as valid information for consumers inearlier stages, thus closing the loop of the tourism infor-mation cycle The information contained in virtual travelcommunities is especially valuable, as it represents per-sonal accounts of probably alike consumers with actualproduct knowledge and no commercial interests Thus,virtual travel communities can serve as a vehicle to controlthe quality of travel products and services through con-sumers’ evaluation and ratings of a wide range of travelproducts and services However, increasing numbers

col-of advertisers and tourism businesses are discovering

vir-tual travel communities as particularly suitable vehicles

to communicate messages to and establish relationships

with specific target markets Thus, it is unclear if virtual

travel communities will remain in the control of

con-sumers and will continue to be used as personal tools

to share tourism-related information or if their focus

will shift toward more commercial content and usage

as promotional tools

Impacts of Internet Technology

on Travel Behavior

The Internet has had and will continue to have a

tremen-dous impact on the way consumers search for, purchase,

consume, and remember tourism experiences However,

the Internet is not the only channel through which

con-sumers obtain information, communicate, or complete

transactions Rather, it is one of many options currently

used by tourism consumers Word of mouth, for

in-stance, remains the most popular way of gaining access to

first-hand knowledge about travel destinations and

tourism experiences Also, travel magazines and movies

continue to be significant sources of inspiration It seems

that the concept of the “hybrid” consumer who uses many

media and technologies simultaneously (Wind, Mahajan,

& Gunther, 2002) is especially applicable to tourism Thus,

the Internet has not replaced traditional channels but

has placed additional options in the hands of consumers

Nevertheless, many current technology developments aim

at convergence and the creation of one channel that can

satisfy all information search, transaction, and

communi-cation needs and, therefore, this situation might change

in the near future

In general, the Internet and its many different

ap-plications have provided consumers with an incredible

number of choices, opportunities for comparison

shop-ping and much more control over many processes related

to the consumption of tourism experiences The success

of auction models such as Priceline.com, where

con-sumers name prices rather than accepting the

industry-imposed price, indicates that the market has shifted from

a supplier- to a consumer-dominated market

Tourism has always been characterized by many

alter-natives Yet many consumers lacked the necessary

infor-mation to take advantage of the variety of tourism offers

available The Internet has, to a large extent, closed this

information gap Internet consumers are much more

in-formed, and this new level of information and knowledge

among “new” consumers has opened up many choices

The larger extent and different, more experiential nature

of information available to consumers has also led to

more accurate expectation formation and more informed

decision-making, both of which are especially important

for the consumers of information-intensive, intangible,

and high-involvement tourism products and services On

one hand, the ease with which information can be made

available online has placed this abundance of

informa-tion at the disposal of the consumers On the other hand, it

causes situations of severe information overload and leads

to many concerns about trust The Internet facilitates

information representation and distribution; however,

it also makes it more difficult for consumers to tify false information Many tourism businesses are verysmall and operate thousands of miles away from wheretheir customers live It is, thus, extremely difficult forconsumers to verify their existence, not to speak of the na-ture and quality of their business practices Consequently,the consumers of travel- and tourism-related products can

iden-be expected to continue relying on offline and online termediaries as well as official Web portals such as desti-nation marketing sites to obtain reliable and trustworthyinformation about tourism establishments

in-The Internet has increased the speed with which mation moves between tourism suppliers and consumers,and many consumers have started to expect instanta-neous information and support with respect to all aspects

infor-of their trips The Internet has influenced not only ceptions of speed but also the extent of personalizationexpected by the consumers of tourism information andproducts These new expectations in terms of speed andpersonalization spurred by the Internet represent an enor-mous challenge for the tourism industry and leave manyconsumers disappointed with the level of service theyreceive

per-One of the main advantages of the Internet is that itprovides consumers with the opportunity for anytime-and-anywhere access to information Many aspects of atrip that had to be planned well in advance can now be fi-nalized while on the road Internet technologies that pro-

vide consumers with such en route access to information

have the potential to significantly transform trip planningand influence travel patterns Recent trends indicate thattravel is in the process of becoming more spontaneousand that many travelers choose to travel to destinationsthat they would not traditionally have considered because

of the high risk One can only speculate about the impact

of this trend on tourism in the Internet era as extensiveplanning is an integral part of the tourism consumptionprocess and careful preparation is often essential to thesuccess of a trip (and sometimes even crucial to the sur-vival of the travel party)

The advent of the Internet has brought about manydystopian fears related to the future of tourism Many

predicted the end of travel per se and pictured tourism

experiences as being confined to virtual reality tions The future of tourism on the Internet from a utopianperspective of course looks much brighter Such a per-spective interprets Internet experiences as a substitute fortravel and, thus, a great opportunity for individuals withdisabilities or other constraints that limit them from trav-eling Neither scenario has been realized so far Internettechnologies have discouraged some types of travel andencouraged others The experiences presented on the In-ternet are far from constituting real substitutes for actualtravel, but they provide invaluable information about ac-cessibility and allow individuals with special needs to pre-pare more accurately for real-world trips Consequently,when analyzing the influence of Internet technologies onconsumer behavior in the context of tourism, one has toconstantly remind oneself that the Internet is still in theprocess of becoming and that its impact on the consumers

simula-of travel and tourism products and services can be partlygrasped but not yet fully understood

T RAVEL AND T OURISM F UTURES 469TRAVEL AND TOURISM FUTURES

For the tourism industry, the Internet is clearly the biggest

opportunity but simultaneously the biggest challenge

Looking to the future, of course, poses many questions;

however, there are a number of general trends

point-ing in the direction of the future development of travel

and tourism In this section five technology-related trends

will be considered: (1) the continuing speed and

sophis-tication of information technology; (2) the continuing

growth in the use and uses of information technology in

tourism; (3) the changing forms of information

technol-ogy as a medium for communication; (4) the emergence

of a new tourism consumer; and (5) the emergence of

experience as the foundation for defining tourism

prod-ucts The following will identify and briefly discuss each

trend, focusing attention on its impact on the tourism

industry

Trend #1 The Continuing Speed and

Sophistication of Information Technology

The personal computer has only recently celebrated its

20th birthday In a recent article in PC Magazine, the

per-sonal computer (PC) was described as one of the most

profound inventions in the history of mankind (Miller,

2002) From its inception in 1981 the development of

com-puter technology has been shown to follow Moore’s Law—

that chip density and therefore the speed of computers

will double every 18 months Thus, computers and

com-puter technology have grown from the very “primitive”

Radio Shack TRS-80 and the IBM 4.7 MHz 64K RAM 8088

processor, an operating system called DOS, and software

called VisiCalc and Wordstar to today’s 2.5-GHz machines

with over 1 GB of RAM Over the years, various

competi-tors have infused the market with a variety of

innova-tions focused on expanding the power of the machine and

the ability of the system to address workplace needs and

encouraging society to think/dream about what might be

in the future (Miller, 2002) As the systems grew more

sophisticated and powerful and arguably more

human-centric, the power of the network was recognized and

spurred even greater innovation In 1990 the World Wide

Web was born, along with a new generation of

innova-tors seeking to build an information infrastructure that

could enable individuals to collaborate from distant

lo-cations The outcome was MOSAIC and a decade of

unparalleled innovation and “build out” in information

infrastructure This new orientation also led to the

devel-opment of a variety of computer-enabled devices, such

as cell phones and personal digital assistants, which

are now beginning to pervade human society (Norman,

1999)

A number of scholars have recently reflected on theprogress of computer technology and have concluded

that there is much to be accomplished before

comput-ers/information technologies can truly enable society to

benefit from their power In The Unfinished Revolution,

Dertouzos (2001) argued that “the real utility of

comput-ers, and the true value of the Information Revolution, still

lie ahead” (p 6) He suggested that over the past 20 years

society has evolved to “fit” around computers and that

the productivity gains from computer technology havebeen “more hype than reality.” Supporting this argument,Norman (1999) suggested that the real benefits will berealized only when computer technology becomes morehuman-centered, that is, when technology adapts to theneeds and lifestyles of human beings They argue that in-formation appliances—computer systems that focus onspecific tasks and are connected through the Internet orwireless technology—are the basis of human-centric andthus “invisible” computing It appears that the focus ofemerging technology is on empowering the individualwithin the framework of the human experience ratherthan defining human behavior around the needs of com-puter designers

Examples of emerging technology that is beginning

to be used in the travel and tourism industry includetravel recommendation systems, virtual reality, and travelguidance systems A number of basic recommenda-tion systems are available in a variety of travel-relatedWeb sites including Ski-europe.com, Travelocity.com, andTIScover.com Indeed, virtual reality and related tech-nologies are evolving sufficiently to enable travelers tosample/experience the destinations prior to the actualtrip In addition, GPS-supported travel guidance systems,which once were considered exotic, are actively marketedfor automobiles

Trend #2 Continuing Growth in the Use and Uses of Information Technology in Tourism

The number of Internet users continues to grow wide and as a result, the Internet’s potential as a marketingmedium has expanded greatly and continues to expand.Internet revenues show a robust growth from about $7.8billion in 1997 to a projected $34 billion in 2002 (For-rester Research, 1999) The characteristics of the Internethave considerably changed over the past five years Thepresent Internet users have become older, considerablyless male, and relatively less educated and are more likely

world-to have families, more likely world-to live in geographic regionscorresponding to the general U.S population distribution,and more likely to represent a broader range of occupa-tional categories than their predecessors

The three leading uses of the Internet cited by allusers were information gathering, searching, and brows-ing Whereas male users are more likely to use the Internetfor information gathering, work, and shopping, femaleusers are more likely to use the Internet for searching,browsing, and education (Pitkow, 1997) According to thelatest FIND/SVP study (1994–1997), the Internet is consid-ered indispensable by 73% of users to describe the impact

of the Internet on their lives An overwhelming majority(over 87.9%) uses the Internet for personal reasons such

as e-mail and instant messaging; 76.3% search for news,product information, educational information, or enter-tainment (University of California, Los Angeles [UCLA],2001) Business use was reported by 60% of all adult In-ternet users (21.7 million users) and includes applicationssuch as file transfer, searching for business news, conduct-ing business research, and shopping for business-relatedgoods and services Further, these studies indicate a sub-stantial increase in online use in terms of the average

online session length, the number of hours spent online

per week, and the number of Web sites visited regularly,

registered with, and paid for by users (FIND/SVP, 1994–

1997; UCLA, 2001)

The Internet and travel industry partnership has

proved beneficial to both industries (Gretzel, Yuan, &

Fesenmaier, 2000; Hardie, Bluestein, McKnight, & Davis,

1997; Jupiter Communications, 1997) Travelers’ usage of

the Internet has grown progressively from 1996 to 2001

The incidence of Internet use among American travelers

has increased from 28 million Internet users in 1996 to

110 million in 2001 (TIA, 1998; 2002a) The Travel

In-dustry Association of America Report on Technology and

Travel for the year 2000 (TIA, 2000) reported that 89%

of Internet users took at least one trip (for business or

leisure) of 100 miles or more, one way, away from home

during the year and 44% of Internet users were frequent

travelers (who had taken five or more trips in the previous

year) According to the 2001 National Travel Survey, 68%

of current Internet users used the Internet to make travel

plans (TIA, 2002a) Travel plans include activities such as

getting information on destinations and checking prices

and schedules This number was up from 27% of

Inter-net users in 1997 and 10% in 1996 Among Americans

who did travel planning over the Internet in 1997, 7%

did all of their travel planning over the Internet, 16%

did most of their travel planning over the Internet, and

nearly one-third used the Internet half the time for

col-lecting travel information The TIA report also indicated

that in 2001, one third (33%) of American travelers who

are online indicated they actually booked or made

reser-vations online The large majority of these travelers

pur-chased airline tickets (80%), reserved a hotel room (62%),

or rented a car (46%) In addition, many online

travel-ers purchased tickets for cultural events (27%) and/or

aamusement parks (14%) As shown in Table 3, these

numbers were slightly lower in 2002, possibly reflecting

the uncertainty caused by the economic downturn and

political instability through terrorism

Table 3 Travel Products/Service Purchased Online In

2002 (among 39.0 Million U.S Travelers Who Have

Internet Access and Who Booked Travel Online)

Tickets—spectator sporting event 16 18

Reservations for personal sports NA 13

(like golf/skiing/water sports)

Source: TIA (2002a).

Trend #3 Changing Forms of Information Technology as a Medium for Communication

Industry experts have increasingly questioned whetherthe Internet is different from other media and if itneeds to be addressed in new ways using new strategies(Godin, 1999; Hoffman & Novak, 1996; Zeff & Aronson,1999) The Internet is special in that both consumers andfirms can interact with the medium, provide content tothe medium, communicate one to one or one to many,and have more direct control over the way they com-municate than using other media When everyone cancommunicate with everyone else not only the old commu-nication models become obsolete but also the communi-cation channels that are based on them (Evans & Wurster,1999)

In contrast to traditional media, the Internet combinesand integrates the following functional properties: (1)information representation; (2) collaboration; (3) com-munication; (4) interactivity; and (5) transactions As aconsequence, Internet communication can be much moreholistic than communication through traditional media.The Internet can simultaneously integrate informational,educational, entertainment, and sales aspects; this flexi-bility makes the Internet rich and appealing but also verycomplex and difficult to deal with Interactive media such

as the Internet call for interactive marketing “The essence

of interactive marketing is the use of information from the customer rather than about the customer” (Day, 1998,

p 47) It differs from traditional marketing because it isbased on a dialogue instead of a one-way communica-tion, and it deals with individual consumers instead ofmass markets (Parsons, Zeisser, & Waitman, 1998) Us-ing these capabilities of the Internet may lead to deeperrelationships with customers and greater personalization

of goods and services Travel and tourism fit especiallywell with this interactivity aspect of the Internet becausethey are an information-intensive and experience-basedindustry

The Internet enables destination-marketing tions to blend together publishing, real-time communi-cation, broadcast, and narrowcast (Hoffman, Novak, &Chatterjee, 1995) It is a medium that attracts attentionand creates a sense of community It is a personal medium,

organiza-an interactive medium, organiza-and a niche organiza-and a mass medium

at the same time (Schwartz, 1998) In contrast to tional media, the trade-off between richness and reach isnot applicable to the Web Evans and Wurster (1999) de-fine richness as the quality of the information presented(accuracy, bandwidth, currency, customization, interac-tivity, relevance, security) Reach refers to the number

tradi-of people who participate in the sharing tradi-of that mation The trade-off between richness and reach leads

infor-to asymmetries of information Thus, when marketing organizations are able to distribute andexchange rich information without constraint, “the chan-nel choices for marketers, the inefficiencies of con-sumer search, the hierarchical structure of supply chains,the organizational pyramid, asymmetries of informa-tion, and the boundaries of the corporation itself willall be thrown into question” (Evans & Wurster, 1999,

destination-p 37)

T RAVEL AND T OURISM F UTURES 471

Trend #4 Emergence of a New

Tourism Consumer

The Internet changes how people communicate and

exchange information The resulting abundance of

infor-mation and ease of communication have led to profound

changes in consumer attitudes and behavior What makes

new consumers “new” is that they are empowered by the

Internet, which provides them with easy and cheap access

to various information sources and extended

communi-ties (Windham & Orton, 2000) New tourism consumers

are well informed, are used to having many choices,

expect speed, and use technologies to overcome the

phys-ical constraints of bodies and borders (Poon, 1993) Lewis

and Bridger (2000) describe the new consumer as being

(1) individualistic; (2) involved; (3) independent; and (4)

informed The Internet is a highly personalized medium

and new consumers expect marketers to address and cater

to their complex personal preferences Consequently, new

tourism consumers are “in control” and have become

im-portant players in the process of creating and shaping

brands

New tourism consumers are also very independent inmaking consumption decisions but, at the same time,

like to share stories about their travel experiences with

members of different communities Stories can convey

emotional aspects of experiences and product/service

qualities that are generally hard to express in writing and,

consequently, are rarely included in traditional product

descriptions Storytelling is an important means of

cre-ating and maintaining communities (Muniz & O’Guinn,

2000) and Internet technologies greatly facilitate this

form of communication and community building among

travelers Importantly, the new scarcities of time and trust

require new tourism consumers to rely heavily on word

of mouth and the expert opinions of like-minded

oth-ers New travel-oriented communities are brand

com-munities or comcom-munities of interest and are imagined,

involve limited liability, and focus on a specific

con-sumption practice (Muniz & O’Guinn, 2000; Wang, et al.,

2002)

A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention(Lewis & Bridger, 2000) New tourism consumers try

to cope with this problem by scanning information

de-pending on personal relevance and have become very

capable of ignoring nonrelevant advertising They are,

therefore, much more active in their travel information

search than old consumers, who were largely passive

in-formation recipients Attention is increasingly reserved

for marketers who have asked for permission and have

established a long-term relationship with the consumer

(Godin, 1999) In return for his/her valuable attention,

the new tourism consumer expects special benefits such

as extremely personalized services Attention peaks when

these travelers reach a psychologically balanced state of

mind, a so-called “flow” experience (Feather, 2000) In

order to reach flow, new tourism consumers are

increas-ingly searching for personalized, emotional, and

intrigu-ing experiences through which they can learn about new

travel and tourism products Therefore, in the world of

the new tourism consumer, the focus shifts from product

attributes to consumption experiences

Attractions Activities

Social Setting

Actual Experience Memories

Fantasy - Stories

Sense of attachment

Figure 3: Sequence of travel experience.

Trend #5 Emergence of Experience as the Foundation for Defining Tourism Products

It has long been recognized that travel is an ence and tourism is a key part of the “experience indus-try” (Pine, Gilmore, & Pine, 1999) However, the role ofexperience in consumption (including pre-, during, andpostpurchase) is only now being considered as one of thefoundations for effective marketing Recent efforts haveshown that the experiential aspects of products and ser-vices provide the starting point for effective marketing(O’Sullivan & Spangler, 1998; Pine et al., 1999; Schmitt,1999) This research indicates that experiences are per-sonal “events” that engage the individual in a meaningfulway As shown in Figure 3, the core element of travel expe-riences is the travel activity, whereas the tourism industryplays the part of an experience “facilitator”; importantly,the setting (social or personal) in which activities occurcontributes substantially to the nature of the experience

experi-It is suggested that although the experiential aspects oftravel are the foundation, the memories that are stored as

a result of these experiences are the key to attracting newvisitors as well as retaining current ones Furthermore,

it is suggested that stories—the mechanisms for nicating experiences through word of mouth or as “doc-umentaries” of experiences (through articles, film, etc.)provide the path through which the tourism industry canbuild and extend markets

commu-Schmitt (1999) and others have argued that the newconsumer evaluates products more on their experientialaspects than on “objective” features such as price andavailability and that experiential marketing should focus

on the experiential aspects that make the consumption ofthe product most compelling—that is, the five senses Ef-fective experiential marketing is sensory and affective Itapproaches consumption as a holistic experience and ac-knowledges that consumers can be either rational or emo-tional or both at the same time Whereas traditional mar-keting is based on consumer behavior, product features,benefits, and quantifiable market segments, experientialmarketing is driven by an understanding of consumerexperiences and the need for personalization New con-sumers require advertising that is entertaining, stimu-lating, and at the same time informative Brands are

no longer seen as mere identifiers but become selves sources of experiences by evoking sensory, affec-tive, creative, and lifestyle-related associations (Schmitt,1999) Thus, experiential marketing blurs the borderbetween advertising, purchase, and use as it attempts tocreate a unique shopping experience and lets the new con-sumer anticipate what the consumption experience will belike

them-FUTURE BEHAVIOR IN TRAVEL

The following briefly summarizes some expectations for

the future role of the Internet in travel and tourism

Travel will continue to be one of the most popular

on-line interests to consumers This trend will increase in

magnitude as travel providers create more effective means

with which to communicate the nature of their offerings

The Internet and alternate access devices are

in-creasing the number of electronic connections between

customers and the tourism industry These new

technolo-gies will continue to provide an environment for creating

relationships, allowing consumers to access information

more efficiently, conducting transactions, and interacting

electronically with businesses and suppliers Examples of

emerging technology in the travel industry include travel

recommendation systems, travel guidance systems and

virtual reality

The changes in demographic profiles of Internet users

over the past decade suggest that the evolving Internet

and related systems will ultimately be adopted by the

large majority of the traveling public and, therefore, the

Internet will be considered the primary source for travel

information

The demands of travelers, and in particular the

purchase process(es) they use, will continue to evolve

as consumers of travel products gain more experience

and confidence in product purchasing over the Internet

Importantly, conversations among travelers (through

travel clubs, virtual communities, etc.) will continue to

grow and will increasingly be mediated through Internet

technologies

Experience- and emotion-oriented Internet

communi-cations will grow in importance as human-centric

com-puting and emotionally intelligent interfaces are offered

on the Internet These interfaces/systems will incorporate

a variety of interpreted information, enabling the systems

to recognize the information needs of the user within an

emotional-psychological need context, in order to provide

supportive interactions and suggestions

The trends identified above set the stage for an

inter-esting and challenging future for the travel and tourism

industry Following from Naisbitt (1994), the “global

para-dox” for travel organizations lies in having to compete at

the local level for individual travelers but also

simultane-ously at the national and international levels The

inno-vative power of the Internet provides stimulating input

for new organizational strategies but at the same time

constrains the ability of current organizations to adjust

to the “new realities.” The rich informational

environ-ment the Internet provides and the availability of and

access to an “infinite” number of “experiential settings”

empower consumers in a variety of ways The challenge

for tourism organizations is to set stages for experience

creation throughout their organizational structures and

to actively involve all employees in the design and

market-ing of experiences so that the full benefits of the Internet

can be realized

GLOSSARY

or Web pages created by taking printed tourism

brochures and directly transferring their contents todigital environments Web sites designed as brochure-ware represent the simplest form of Web design

as they display information in a static way andprovide only limited navigation and communicationfunctions

Central reservation system (CRS) A system that vides access to information about airline, hotel, orrental company inventories and is used for sales, mar-keting, and ticketing purposes The elements of a CRSinclude a central processing unit, a central database,and a communications network that links informationproviders and users to the central information storageand processing system

pro-Click stream A recorded path of the pages a user quests in navigating through one or more Web sites.Click stream information can help Web site owners andadvertisers understand how visitors use a site Morespecifically, it provides insights with respect to how thesite was found, how much time was spent on the site,and what specific pages were accessed

re-Customer relationship management (CRM) A set ofbusiness principles employed with the aim of strength-ening a tourism organization’s relationships with itsclients, optimizing customer service levels, and obtain-ing customer information that can be used for market-ing purposes

infor-mation technology infrastructure used by destinationmarketing organizations to support a wide range ofpromotion, sales, and advertising efforts Typical ele-ments of such systems are technologies to design andproduce printed materials, tourist information centerservices (including information and reservation sys-tems), call center services, kiosks, database marketingapplications, project/event management software, andmarketing research applications

Destination marketing organization (DMO) is an ganization with responsibility for marketing a specifictourism destination to the travel trade and to individ-ual travelers

or-Distribution channel A set of interdependent tions, such as tour operators or travel agents, involved

organiza-in the process of makorganiza-ing tourism products or servicesavailable to consumers

En route information Information obtained while eling, as opposed to information collected before or af-ter the trip; mainly used for navigational purposes or tosupport short-term decision making during the actualvacation

trav-Flow A seamless, intrinsically enjoyable, reinforcing, and captivating psychological experienceoccurring when there is an optimal match betweenthe challenge at hand and one’s skills

self-Global distribution system (GDS) A system that linksseveral central reservation systems, thus providing amuch more global coverage than individual computer-ized reservation systems

Human-centric computing The process of designing,developing, and implementing information technol-ogy that reflects the needs and lifestyles of its humanusers

R EFERENCES 473

Information asymmetry Also referred to as

informa-tion gap; a condiinforma-tion in which at least some vant information is known to some but not all partiesinvolved Information asymmetry causes markets tobecome inefficient, because not all players have equalaccess to information needed for decision-makingprocesses

rele-Intermediary A third party organization such as a travel

agent, tour operator, incoming agent, hotel chain, orCRS/GDS provider that facilitates information transferand/or transactions between the primary suppliers andconsumers of tourism products and services

Telepresence A mental state in which a user feels

phys-ically present within a remote, computer-mediatedenvironment

Travel and tourism industry The individuals and

orga-nizations that are involved in the production and tribution of travel and tourism-related products

dis-Travel decision support system (TDSS) An

informa-tion system designed to simplify the travel making process and support consumers in the varioussteps involved in planning trips

decision-Travel destination The end-point of a trip or trip

segment The term is also used to describe a aphically or perceptionally defined area of particu-lar interest to tourists and includes all attractionsand other tourism establishments that exist within itsboundaries

geogr-Tourism experience The sum of sensory, cognitive, and

emotional inputs derived from the activities pursuedduring a vacation

Virtual travel community A community facilitated by

computer-mediated communication that allows itsmembers to conduct various types of travel-relatedtasks, such as obtaining travel information, maintain-ing connections, finding travel companions, or sim-ply having fun by telling each other interesting storiesabout their travel experiences

Virtual tour A tool that enables potential

con-sumers of tourism products to explore and immersethemselves within an interactive Web environment

in order to gain the needed experiential informationabout a destination or tourism establishment

CROSS REFERENCES

See Customer Relationship Management on the Web;

Inter-net Literacy; Online Communities; Web Site Design.

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476

Universally Accessible Web Resources: Designing

for People with Disabilities

Universally Accessible Web Resources: Designing

for People with Disabilities

Jon Gunderson, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign

Microsoft Power Point Accessibility Plug-in 490

Tim Berners Lee developed the first HTML (hypertext

markup language) Web browser/editor in 1990 to enable

scientists at the CERN particle physics lab in Switzerland

to share electronic documents on a wide range of

com-puting systems At the heart of the design of HTML

tech-nologies is the concept of interoperability, the ability of

providing and receiving electronic documents using

pub-lic standards for creating, serving, and viewing the

infor-mation on a wide variety of computing equipment In the

beginning the focus was on the information Users

typ-ically had a wide range of choices and control over the

rendering of Web documents Authors were not very

in-terested in controlling the rendering of HTML and indeed

HTML has limited features for absolute control over

ren-dering

MYTHS OF THE WEB

As the Web was commercialized through the introduction

of graphical browsers (NCSA Mosaic, Netscape Navigator,

and Microsoft Internet Explorer) in the mid- to late 1990s

there was a fundamental change in the relationship

be-tween the control authors had over the rendering style of

Web resources and the users’ ability to control the

render-ing There are many reasons for this shift, but the result

is that the vast majority of Web authors developing

com-mercial content primarily think of the Web as a graphical

medium At the same time the most popular commercial

browser developers provided users with fewer and fewer

options for adjusting the rendering of Web resources to

a point where most users today do not know they haveany control over the rendering of Web content, and thisreinforces the beliefs of the Web as a graphical medium

in which users have no control over rendering This haslead to the design of inaccessible Web resources thatincreasingly only support graphical renderings and theuse of pointing devices (e.g., the mouse) for interactingwith dynamic content An example of this narrowing view

of interoperability is many developers requiring their Webpages appear visually the same in both Netscape Naviga-tor 4.7 and Internet Explorer 4.0+ even though NetscapeNavigator 4.7 is an outdated technology that does not con-form to HTML 4.0 or 3.2 specifications (CITA Surveys,2001a, 2001b) This approach leads developers to use im-ages and complex table layouts for styling and positioningtext and images, giving users little opportunity to accessthe content in non-graphical renderings of text, Braille, orspeech

DIGITAL DIVIDE

The divide between people with visual impairments andable-bodied Web users was investigated by Pernice-Coyneand Nielsen (2001) They found that people who usescreen magnification technologies could only completeWeb tasks about 21% of the time and people using speechoutput about 12.5% of the time When compared to theable-bodied control group performance of completingtasks about 78% of the time, it is clear that current Webdesign is creating tremendous barriers to people with

477

disabilities When the visually impaired and blind did

complete tasks they took about twice as much time and

visited twice as many Web resources as the control group

This indicates that Web resources are not providing

in-formation on the structure or organization of their Web

pages so that they can be used by people with disabilities

to efficiently identify and find the information they seek

It is estimated that in 1997 approximately 48 million

Americans over the age of 15 years old have some type of

disability and that about 17 million identified themselves

as having a severe disability (US Census Bureau, 2001)

As people age the percentage with disabilities increases

from 1.6% for people between the ages of 15 and 24 years

old, to 5% for those between the ages of 21 and 64, and

then triples to 17% for those over the age of 65 So a

ma-jor part of the financial argument for designing

univer-sally accessible Web resources is designing resources that

deal with an increasingly aging population and the

eco-nomic power and productive capacities they bring to our

nation’s economy Kay (2000) found this barrier in the use

of computer technology by people with disabilities, who

own computers at half the rate as the general population

and use the Internet about a fourth of the time There are

many factors that influence computer ownership and

In-ternet use Probably one of the most critical factors is how

the technology is designed to be inclusive of the needs of

people with disabilities Before concrete ramps and curb

cuts were built into the physical structures of our society

few places were accessible to people with disabilities who

were thus invisible to much of the general public In the

same way, electronic ramps and curb cuts need to be built

into our electronic infrastructure before we will see the

wide-spread presence of people with disabilities on the

Internet

ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF THE WEB

For the Web to become more accessible to people with

dis-abilities Web authors need to understand that people will

be viewing their resources through many different

render-ings, including graphical, text, and speech This section

outlines the technologies people with disabilities use to

access the Web, including the rendering options of

popu-lar Web browsers and specialized technologies designed

specifically for people with disabilities

The W3C User Agent Accessibility Guidelines

(Ja-cobs, Gunderson, and Hansen, 2002) outline the types

of features browsers and multimedia players need to

provide in order for people with disabilities to be able

to access Web content One of the primary requirements

is the ability to support the keyboard People with many

types of disabilities for various reasons can only use the

keyboard to control the browser Therefore, functions not

available through keyboard commands will not be

avai-lable to people with disabilities People with disabilities

also need to be able to select what types of content

they want to view For example, people who cannot see

images benefit more from text descriptions of the images

They would configure the browser to render the text

description of an image in place of the graphical image

Other types of control include the ability to control the

styling of text font characteristics and the foreground

and background colors where the text is rendered People

with visual impairments often need to use sans seriffonts, larger text size, and specific color combinations tomake the text readable Automatic behaviors supported

by many graphical browsers, like authors automaticallygenerating new windows, can be disorienting becausethe user is not expecting a new window to open whenthey follow a link Usually the new window is givenfocus When the user tries to use the back function ofthe browser to reorient themselves to the previous pagethe page does not change, since the new window doesnot inherit the history of the previous window This is

a usability problem for all users, but it has an increasedimpact on people with disabilities since they often do nothave information about the choices available to them and,

as well, are not oriented to the new window being open.People who are blind cannot use the computer screen

at all and use synthetic speech and refreshable Brailledisplays to access Web content Speech navigation andbrowsing is much different than graphical browsing sincethe user is only able to view the content linearly When us-ing speech it is important to provide markup that allowsusers to skip to important structures like headers, navi-gation bars, and links Otherwise, users need to read theentire document to understand the information available

KEYBOARD SUPPORT

Applications written for Microsoft Windows typicallyhave very good keyboard support in contrast to appli-cations written for Apple Macintosh and the variousflavors of the UNIX X-Windows systems This gener-alization is also applicable to browsers Browsers likeNetscape Navigator (http://www.netscape.com), InternetExplorer (http://www.microsoft.com/ie), and OperasoftOpera (http://www.opera.com) all have keyboard short-cuts for the following functions:

Next link or form controlPrevious link or form controlSelect link

Move focus to next frameReload content (Refresh)Stop loading contentMove to previous resource in historyMove to next resource in historyShow next page of contentShow previous page of contentNext frame

Menu bar optionsNavigation and setting of controls in dialog boxesOpera provides additional keyboard commands that al-low the user to navigate the structural elements of Webresources This includes individual functions to navigate

by headers (H1–H6), form controls, and HTML by-element This type of function allows users to moreefficiently identify the main topics of a Web page, sincethey do not need to rely on the styling the author usedfor the header to identify the text as a major topic Onpages with a large number of links it can be rather tedious

element-to navigate element-to a specific link using the simple next linkfunction available in Internet Explorer and Netscape

A CCESS TO T EXT D ESCRIPTIONS 479

Figure 1: Help files for Internet Explorer keyboard shortcuts.

Navigator Opera allows the user to navigate past large

numbers of links (if headers are used properly by the

au-thor) to the header closest to the link they want to

se-lect and then use the next link function from this

posi-tion Opera has a second function for navigating to links

whereby the user can use keyboard commands to view

the list of links in a document or individual links, using

letter keys to move to those links that start with that

let-ter This type of function helps people with minimal range

of motion use their physical ability more efficiently and

people with visual impairments to have more options for

searching and selecting a link The keyboard shortcuts for

a browser or multimedia player can typically be found in

the help system (Figure 1)

ACCESS TO TEXT DESCRIPTIONS

One of the most important configuration options is the

ability to render text descriptions for images HTML has

two attributes of the IMG element that can be used to

pro-vide text descriptions, the ALT attribute for short

descrip-tions and the LONGDESC attribute for providing a link

to a longer description Most graphical browsers render

ALT text content in place of an image when the browser

is configured to not render images, but the quality of

the rendering varies considerably among current browser

technology One of the major issues with rendering text

descriptions is the difference in space required to

ren-der the text descriptions Often text descriptions require

more graphical space than the original image, requiring

a re-flow of content to accommodate the text description

When images are used for spacing and positioning this

can often create a distorted rendering of text, making itmore difficult for the user to understand the content rela-tionships

Currently the major graphical browsers Opera 6.05,Internet Explorer 6.0, and Netscape 7.0 do not fullysupport access to the text descriptions for all images, only

a subset or under special conditions The HTML IMGelement is the most popular way authors include images

in Web pages, but other elements including AREA andINPUT can have ALT attribute content The IMG elementincludes an ALT attribute and a LONGDESC attribute forassociating text descriptions with images Table 1 showsthe capabilities of various browsers in rendering ALT textdescriptions

Figures 2, 3, and 4 show the ALT text rendering of thesame Web page for Opera 6.1, Internet Explorer 6.0, andNetscape Navigator 7.0, respectively Opera renders theALT text and has extensive styling capabilities for the ALTtext Internet Explorer for Windows renders that ALT textand limits the ability of the user to style the ALT text.Netscape Navigator does not render ALT text when ren-dering of images are turned off

The text content of the ALT attribute is designed to vide a short text description of an image The LONGDESCattribute provides a URI to a Web resource that will pro-vide a more detailed description of the image For exam-ple, if the image was a chart of what flavors of ice creampeople prefer at a certain ice cream store, the LONGDESCcould point to a Web page with a text table representation

pro-of the ice cream preferences Opera has a very good mentation of rendering ALT text, since it provides the userwith extensive control over styling the ALT text Other

imple-Table 1 Browser Capabilities of Rendering ALT Text and Providing a Link to LONGDESC URI

Render ALT Text for Render ALT Text User Styling Link to

Opera6.01

Windows98/2000/XP,MacintoshOS9, and UNIX

InternetExplorer6.0

Windows98/2000/XP

Yes, except whenscripts dynamicallychange the imagesource attribute

InternetExplorer5.1

Macintosh OS9 Yes, unless images

are cached

Netscape7.0

Windows98/2000/XP,MacintoshOS9, and UNIX

menu that is onlyaccessible withmouse commands

implementations, including Internet Explorer, provide

varying levels of access to ALT text, ranging to no access

in the case of Netscape 6.2 Access to ALT text has much

better implementation than access to the LONGDESC

at-tribute It is ironic that the one browser providing access

to the LONGDESC URI, Netscape 6.2, does not provide

access to the ALT text description Table 1 shows that no

browser provides complete access to text descriptions for

the IMG element, limiting the types of content users will

have access to when using these browsers

The <INPUT> element of type “image” and <AREA>

element that defines the clickable areas on an image MAP

also have ALT attributes Currently none of the majorgraphical browsers support the in-content rendering ofALT text associated with the AREA element, some pro-vide access through display as a tool tip (e.g., a pop textdescription of an element that appears when the pointingdevice hovers over an element rendering) and many as-sistive technologies like screen can read the value of theALT text The lack of support makes the links of the imageMAP elements inaccessible to many people with disabil-ities who have poor vision and do not use assistive tech-nologies Authors should always provide redundant textlinks for both server-side and client-side image MAPs

Figure 2: View of ALT text rendering in Opera.

A CCESS TO T EXT D ESCRIPTIONS 481

Figure 3: View of ALT text rendering in Internet Explorer.

Figure 4: View of ALT text rendering in Netscape Navigator.

Table 2 Browser Capabilities of Overriding Author Styles with User Style Sheets

Ignore Author Font Adjust Default Font

Opera

6.01

Windows98/2000/XP,MacintoshOS9, and UNIX

Internet

Explorer6.0

Windows98/2000/XP

size controlexcept throughstyle sheets

Limited tofonts andcolors

Yes

Internet

Explorer5.5

cascade withauthor style sheets(i.e., cannot useuser style sheetswhen author stylesheets are turnedon)

Netscape

6.2

Windows98/2000/XP,MacintoshOS9, and UNIX

fonts andcolors

No

USER STYLING OF TEXT

People with visual impairments and learning disabilities

that affect reading need to control the font characteristics,

font size, and foreground and background colors of text

In early graphical browsers, like NCSA Mosaic, this was

a built-in feature and the user could completely configure

the default style sheet used for rendering HTML Current

browsers vary widely in their ability to allow the user to

control the rendering of text Table 2 shows the

capabil-ities of several popular browsers in allowing the user to

control the rendering of text

The W3C Cascading Style Sheet (Lie & Bos, 1997)

tech-nology was designed to address many of the author and

user styling issues of separating the structure of a Web

resource and the styling for a particular rendering The

advantage to developers in using style sheet technology is

that a single style sheet can be used to control the

ren-dering of any number of Web pages, making it easier for

webmasters to change the look and feel of their Web site

without having to individually edit pages or elements One

of the more powerful aspects of the CSS specifications is

user style sheets The W3C realized that users need

trol over rendering and the specification includes the

con-cept of user style sheets overriding author-supplied style

sheets Opera has actually implemented the concept of

user and author styling and provides a very concrete

in-terface for users to select author and user styling

prefer-ences (Figure 5) Opera also provides a one-step command

(clickable icon or single key press) for the user to switch

between author styling and user styling of Web content

This is a very useful feature not only for users, but also

Web developers Authors can easily switch between their

designs and a high-contrast styling that might be used

by someone with a visual impairment The high-contrastsetting helps them to determine whether their Web de-sign will work for someone with a severe visual impair-ment or using portable technologies like a PDA or speechbrowser that does not have the same rendering character-istics as a graphical browser Microsoft Internet Explorerimplements user style sheets, but does not allow the user

to completely ignore style sheets supplied by the author.Table 2 shows the features available to users to control theauthor-supplied styles and to apply their own style sheets

in various browsers

SPEECH BROWSING

Speech browsing is a fundamentally different way of cessing Web information In a graphical rendering the au-thor often uses spatial relationships to group information

ac-on the screen and the users passively scan the screen toidentify the grouping of information However, a speechrendering is temporal and requires the user to issue com-mands to direct the browser to read and reread content.The user could issue a command to speak the entire con-tent of a Web page, but in general this is an inefficient wayfor the user to locate the information they are interested

in It is the equivalent of a sighted user reading the entirecontents of a Web page before they started looking forlinks or other groupings of information on the page Mostable-bodied users scan the screen for highlighted text andother visual cues to identify links and the grouping of in-formation in the Web page In a well-designed Web pagethe author has intentionally created cues to help users fo-cus their attention on information the author thinks is

S PEECH B ROWSING 483

Figure 5: Opera 6.0 settings for rendering style preferences used in author and user

modes

important The same is true in speech browsing If

au-thors include structural markup, users using any

technol-ogy can style that structure to highlight the information

to the user by way of speech, text, or graphical renderings

Speech browsers like IBM Home Page Reader(http://www.ibm.com/able) and Freedom Scientific’s

JAWS screen reader (http://www.freedomscientific.com)

have features for users to navigate HTML structural

information For example, they can navigate to elements

marked as headings, links, and form controls, andthrough table data cells These functions only work whenauthors use HTML header and other markup correctly

in their Web resources Figure 6 shows the read menu

in IBM Home Page Reader (HPR), which highlights thedifferent ways that HPR can be used to navigate throughcontent By providing users access to the structuredmarkup it is easier for users to find the main groups ofcontent without reading the entire document Speech

Figure 6: Main menu reading options in IBM Home Page Reader.

can be styled to indicate different types of elements.

In IBM Home Page Reader the reading voice for links

is styled as a female voice while non-link content is

styled as a male voice for static text (voice can be

con-figured to other settings by the user) Form controls that

have explicit text labels associated with them can have

their labels announced when the form control receives

focus

Many Web pages do not contain structural markup

This forces speech browsers to look for implied structure

if they want to offer the user more than just a linear

read-ing of the document In the example of form controls,

speech browsers may try to calculate the relationships

be-tween the form control and text around the form control

to determine the label for the control This is

problem-atic since the guess can be wrong and instead of helping

the user, the user maybe confused over the purpose of

the control If images do not have ALT text descriptions,

current speech browsers may use the file name of the

image in hopes that it may contain some useful

infor-mation about the purpose and the content of the image

These approaches may help accessibility when the

calcu-lations are correct When calcucalcu-lations are not correct they

can seriously hurt accessibility by increasing the

confu-sion and misinformation to users, which results in users

taking more time to explore the resource or improperly

completing the task they are trying to complete In

gen-eral these types of calculations should be unnecessary if

authors and authoring tools (Treviranus et al., 2000)

sup-ported the inclusion of information for accessibility

WEB DESIGN GUIDELINES

The W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0

(Chisholm, Vanderheiden, & Jacobs, 1999) and the U.S

Government Section 508 regulations for Electronic and

Information Technology Accessibility Standards (Access

Board, 2000) are the most widely used Web design

re-quirements for designing or repairing Web resources to

be more accessible The W3C Guidelines were designed

from the perspective of the needs of people with

disabil-ities and was a public and consensus-based process The

Section 508 Web requirements were based on a need of the

U.S Federal Government to define Web accessibility

stan-dards that they felt were achievable and verifiable given

the current state of disability access to the Web and the

limitations of industry understanding of how to support

the accessibility of web resources by people with

disabi-lities The Section 508 requirements were loosely based

on the Priority 1 requirements of the W3C Guidelines, so

the requirements are similar at that level

W3C WEB CONTENT ACCESSIBILITY

GUIDELINES

A detailed review of the W3C requirements (Chisholm

et al., 1999) is beyond the scope of this chapter, since

there are 64 checkpoints (requirements) organized into

14 guidelines with each requirement having an

associ-ated priority The priorities associassoci-ated with each of the

WCAG checkpoints correspond to the relative importance

of satisfying the requirement to the needs of people with

disabilities This section will highlight the organization ofthe guidelines and the major accessibility themes

WCAG Priorities and Conformance

The following are the definitions of the priorities used inWCAG to identify how important a particular requirement

is for people with disabilities to access content:

Priority 1: One or more groups will find it impossible to

access information in the document if this requirement

is not satisfied

Priority 2: One or more groups will find it difficult to access

information in the document if this requirement is notsatisfied

Priority 3: One or more groups will find it somewhat ficult to access information in the document if this re-

dif-quirement is not satisfied

An author of a Web document can claim conformance

to the guidelines at one of the priority levels when theysatisfy all the requirements at the desired priority leveland the preceding levels An author can claim Single Aconformance to WCAG when all applicable Priority 1 re-quirements for their document are satisfied, Double Aconformance when all Priority 1 and 2 requirements aresatisfied, and Triple-A conformance when all Priority 1, 2,and 3 requirements are satisfied The publication of a con-formance claim is useful in promoting accessible designand providing users with expectations on the accessibility

of the resource

WCAG Guidelines

The guidelines are organized into logical groupings ofrequirements The document was developed on the no-tion of HTML and CSS technologies, but the accessibil-ity requirements were intentionally designed to be moregeneric to allow the requirements to be applied to otherW3C and non-W3C technologies as they became available.The WCAG requirements do not have the specificity ofrequirements for HTML defined in the Section 508 Webaccessibility guidelines The W3C guidelines do have anassociated techniques document (Chisholm et al., 1999)that does provide design examples for HTML, CSS, andother technologies The techniques document is designed

to be informative and authors are not required to use thetechniques outlined in the techniques document to satisfy

a particular WCAG requirement

Guideline 1: Provide Equivalent Alternatives

to Auditory and Visual Content

Images need to have text descriptions for people withvisual impairments and some types of visual-processinglearning disabilities to understand the purpose and thecontent the image conveys in the document Some im-ages may require longer descriptions to convey the sameinformation to the user For example, images of a famouspainting or a satellite photograph would need a longer de-scription if the author uses the image to convey importantinformation in the document An image of a numericalchart or table would need to have a text table of the same

W3C W EB C ONTENT A CCESSIBILITY G UIDELINES 485

information available Audio resources with speech need

text transcriptions and videos need to be captioned and

have text descriptions of action

Guideline 2: Do Not Rely on Color Alone

Some Web designers encode information in color There

are many people with visual impairments (including

people with color blindness) that cannot see the

infor-mation coded as a color In this case there needs to be

another means to convey the information Examples of

information based on color are if the color of a score on a

test was used to indicate the letter grade associated with

the score or there were directions on the Web page to

press a red button To correct this problem the actual

let-ter grade should be included with the scores and the ALT

text label of the button should be referred to instead of

the color of the button

Guideline 3: Use Markup and Style Sheets

and Do So Properly

One of the main problems with current Web design is that

authors use graphical styling to encode the structure of

the document Instead of using the HTML H1 element

to indicate the main topic of a document, authors use

the FONT element to style the text for the main topic or

an image of prestyled text So users who cannot use the

author styling and apply their own styling or are using

a speech rendering will not be able to identify the main

topics of the document When using HTML the proper

way to indicate structure is to use the HTML elements

like H1–H6, LABEL, CAPTION, TH, and MAP and the list

elements (OL, UL, DL) to properly indicate the structure

between elements of information in the document, and

to use Cascading Style Sheets to style the elements for

different types of visual effects

Validating HTML markup is also important in makingsure that documents meet the requirements of the HTML

language, which ensures that documents can be rendered

on any HTML compatible browser Many times authors

or authoring tools use proprietary features of a particular

browser or create invalid markup that can only be

ren-dered when using the HTML repair features of one or two

browsers This limits the choices users have for accessing

the content Many times authors are not even aware that

they have created content that can only be rendered in

one or two browsers Creating valid HTML markup will

become more important as the Web matures and XML

becomes more widely supported Browser developers will

want to focus their energies on exploiting the capabilities

of XML and not repair invalid HTML markup HTML is

being replaced with then newer XHTML, which provides

a consistent markup that is inherently more accessible

Slowly these repair features will disappear from browsers,

like in the move from Netscape 4.7 to Netscape 6.2+ which

is designed to support W3C standards

Guideline 4: Clarify Natural Language Usage

This requirement is critical for speech browsers, since the

only way a speech browser can identify the language

reli-ably is when the author adds language information to the

document In HTML every element can include a LANG

attribute to indicate the language of the content of the

element For example a document that is primary glish should use <HTML LANG = “en”> in the begin-ning of the document If the author uses a French quota-tion, the container element for the quote should include aLANG = “fr”

En-Guideline 5: Create Tables that Transform Gracefully

Most of the HTML table markup used on the Web isfor graphical positioning This is a potential problem forspeech renderings that read information in documentorder Table formatting that puts connected informationout of document order can be confusing to speech users

or people who use technologies that do not render tablemarkup (i.e., Lynx browser) If tables are used for layoutthey should be as simple as possible and should be testedwith a speech browser, a text-only browser, or a graphicalbrowser like Opera that can be configured to ignore tablemarkup to verify that the linear rendering makes sensewhen the table markup is removed

Guideline 6: Ensure that Pages Featuring New Technologies Transform Gracefully

Technologies like Macromedia Flash, Adobe Acrobat, andXML technologies like MathML, SVG, and WAP havevarying degrees of disability access solutions, so whenusing technologies like these you will need to determinethe current extent to which the technology supports userswith disabilities Many times technologies will not be able

to meet the needs of major disability groups and tives that provide a more accessible version of the infor-mation will need to be created This type of informationredundancy should not be considered a problem necessar-ily, but as an opportunity to provide information in morethan one form that provides everyone with the opportu-nity to use information that is in a form most useful tothem and their needs, which is the original pupose of theWeb

alterna-Guideline 7: Ensure User Control of Time-Sensitive Content Changes

People who need extra time to read information or whohave physical impairments that slow their response timeneed to be able to have additional control over time-sensitive information Providing mechanisms for the user

to receive extra time to respond to a prompt is importantand should be an option on pages with time-sensitive in-put In secure environments it would be useful to allowuser settings or configuration options to provide the ex-tended response information throughout the system

Guideline 8: Ensure Direct Accessibility

of Embedded User Interfaces

Embedded technologies like Java and Active-X need to

be compatible with assistive technologies, but also havebuilt-in accessibility features This may require adding ad-ditional controls to allow the user to style text and otherobjects presented through the embedded interface; or toprovide an option for the user to style the interface based

on the user’s operating system style preferences Keyboardsupport is important in the design of embedded user in-terfaces and the user needs to be able to control auto-mated behaviors Many times technologies will not be

able to meet the needs of major disability groups and

an alternative that provides a more accessible means for

people to access the information available through the

embedded interface will need to be created

Guideline 9: Design for Device Independence

One of the major problems for dynamic Web content is

that designers only include support for pointer devices It

is important to use device-independent events or

redun-dent event handlers to allow users to interact with the

content using the widest number of input devices

possi-ble, including only the use of the keyboard When

device-independent event handlers are not available, make sure

that you at least support the keyboard and mouse pointer

for all the functionalities of your dynamic content

Guideline 10: Use Interim Solutions

There are gaps between what browser and assistive

cur-rent technologies can offer for accessibility and what

specifications provide as accessibility features This is by

nature a dynamic requirement, so the requirements in this

section should fade as technologies become obsolete

Guideline 11: Use W3C Technologies and Guidelines

The use of W3C technologies are recommended since

recent W3C specifications have been reviewed for

acces-sibility features and support open and interoperable

stan-dards This means that people using W3C technologies

can support users with disabilities and also provide users

with more choices to access content Technologies like

Adobe Acrobat and Macromedia Flash are adding

acces-sibility features, but their features are based on retrofitting

their current technologies with accessibility features The

retrofitting process often limits the capabilities of their

players for rendering information accessibly, because the

technology may have inherit accessibility problems due to

the original design of the technology In contrast

technolo-gies like HTML, CSS, and SMIL are supported by many

developers and give the user more choices in accessing

content

Guideline 12: Provide Context and

Orientation Information

One of the primary problems in current Web-site design is

the lack of information that can be used by nongraphical

renderings to identify the structure and the relationships

of information on the page Many Web authors view the

Web as primarily a graphical medium and use graphical

methods to encode the structure of the document These

graphical techniques do not translate the structural

rela-tionships very well to text and speech renderings Often

the graphical techniques used to indicate structure

actu-ally cause information to be distorted in nongraphical

ren-derings, which typically use document order as the means

to render information If table markup is used to position

information for a graphical rendering the document order

often separates connected pieces of information, making

the nongraphical rendering confusing

Guideline 13: Provide Clear Navigation Mechanisms

Navigation is an important issue, especially for accessing

information in Web sites, documents that have a large

number of links, or large structured documents Someexamples of how markup can be used to improve navi-gation in HTML include these:

The text associated with a link to indicate the destination

of the link,The use of markup to provide users with a means to skipover repetitive navigation links,

Use of the MAP element to indicate a collection of relatedlinks, and

Use of the LABEL element to indicate the purpose of aform control

Guideline 14: Ensure that Documents Are Clear and Simple

A requirement to use clear and simple language and out is often very subjective and is often linked more forusability than for disability access However, since manypeople with cognitive disabilities may have language im-pairments it is important to carefully review the termsand organization of Web resources to make the resources

lay-as elay-asy to read lay-as possible Carefully consider the types

of people who will be using the Web resources and theirtasks and interests

It is important to look at Web resources from the spective of users and not from managers and other em-ployees One of the largest problems in Web site design

per-is that many people design to meet their own needs, orthe desires of the sponsors of the Web site or the manager

of the organization the Web site represents This often sults in designs that do not meet the very different needs ofthe intended users People within the organization usuallyunderstand procedures and relationships that users com-ing to the Web site do not This often results in too muchinformation on the main page, jargon unfamiliar to theusers, and the expenditure of resources on visual effectsthat increase Web site visual esthetics, but do little to helpthe user to understand and complete tasks on the Webresource

re-WCAG 2.0 Development

WCAG 2.0 is currently under development and this willsupercede the current WCAG 1.0 requirements For moreinformation on the current status of WCAG 2.0 or to par-ticipate in the group activities go to their home page:http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL

U.S SECTION 508 REQUIREMENTS

The Section 508 Web Electronic and Information ogy Accessibility Standards (Access Board, 2000), devel-oped by the Access Board of the U.S Federal Government,includes accessibility requirements for all electronicmachinery, computers, and software used by the federalgovernment Other regulations of the Access Board havebeen interpreted and applied to information in theAmericans with Disabilities Act (1990) technical require-ments

Technol-The Web accessibility requirements of Section 508 arebased mostly on the W3C Web Content Guideline Priority

1 requirements and a few additional requirements defined

E VALUATION T OOLS 487

by the access board Therefore Section 508 requirements

are considered a minimum accessibility requirement,

ba-sically ensuring that a Web resource is not impossible for

a person with a disability to access One of the

organiza-tional differences between WCAG and Section 508 is that

the Section 508 requirements are designed to be much

more specific to HTML and CSS technologies Section 508

also has an additional requirement on functional

perfor-mance, which is a general requirement for all those of

Section 508, but applies also to the Web requirements

The Web requirements for accessibility are minimal, and

authors are encouraged to consider design features more

accessible than 508 requires

The following are the Section 508 requirements forWeb content with comments related to specific WCAG 1.0

checkpoint requirements:

A text equivalent for every nontext element shall be

pro-vided (e.g., via “alt,” “longdesc,” or in element content)

(compatible with WCAG Checkpoint 1.1).

Equivalent alternatives for any multimedia presentation

shall be synchronized with the presentation ble with WCAG Checkpoint 1.4).

(compati-Web pages shall be designed so that all information

con-veyed with color is also available without color, for

example, from context or markup (compatible with WCAG Checkpoint 2.1).

Documents shall be organized so they are readable

with-out requiring an associated style sheet (compatible with WCAG Checkpoint 6.1).

Redundant text links shall be provided for each active

region of a server-side image map (compatible with WCAG Checkpoint 1.2).

Client-side image maps shall be provided instead of

server-side image maps except where the regions cannot be

defined with an available geometric shape (compatible with WCAG Checkpoint 9.1).

Row and column headers shall be identified for data tables

(compatible with WCAG Checkpoint 5.1).

Markup shall be used to associate data cells and header

cells for data tables that have two or more logical

lev-els of row or column headers (compatible with WCAG Checkpoint 5.2).

Frames shall be titled with text that facilitates frame

identification and navigation (compatible with WCAG Checkpoint 12.1).

Pages shall be designed to avoid causing the screen to

flicker with a frequency greater than 2 Hz and lower

than 55 Hz (compatible with WCAG Checkpoint 7.1).

A text-only page, with equivalent information or

function-ality, shall be provided to make a Web site comply withthe provisions of this part, when compliance cannot beaccomplished in any other way The content of the text-only page shall be updated whenever the primary page

changes (compatible with WCAG Checkpoint 11.4).

When pages utilize scripting languages to display content,

or to create interface elements, the information vided by the script shall be identified with functional

pro-text that can be read by assistive technology (no WCAG 1.0 equivalent).

When a Web page requires that an applet, plug-in, or otherapplication be present on the client system to interpretpage content, the page must provide a link to a plug-in

or applet that complies with§1194.21(a) through (l) This is an important user functionality that is part of the W3C User Agent Accessibility Guidelines 1.0, instead of WCAG 1.0.

When electronic forms are designed to be completed line, the form shall allow people using assistive tech-nology to access the information, field elements, andfunctionality required for completion and submission

on-of the form, including all directions and cues (requires more than UAAG Checkpoint 10.2 and 12.4).

A method shall be provided that permits users to skip

repetitive navigation links (no WCAG 1.0 equivalent) Skipping repetitive navigation links is considered an im- portant usability feature to help users skip over repetitive navigation bars and advertisements to get to the main content of a document faster.

When a timed response is required, the user shall bealerted and given sufficient time to indicate more time

is required (no WCAG 1.0 equivalent) This is an tant user functionality, and this problem is addressed in the W3C User Agent Accessibility Guidelines 1.0, instead

impor-of WCAG 1.0 by the W3C.

EVALUATION AND REPAIR TOOLS

The Section 508 requirements and W3C WCAG guidelinescan be rather tedious to use and to many authors the ter-minology used in the guidelines is unfamiliar Automatedanalysis and repair tools have been developed to helpauthors identify the accessibility problems in their Websites

ren-is that HTML and XHTML have requirements that port accessibility For example, the inclusion of an ALT at-tribute (short text description of the image) for IMG andAREA elements is required for a document to be valid,which is one of the most common accessibility problem

sup-on the Web Figure 7 shows the HTML validator service

of the W3C (http://validator.w3.org/)

EVALUATION TOOLS

The first generation of automated accessibility tion tools is exemplified by the Bobby Web site and soft-ware (http://bobby.watchfire.com) Bobby was originallydeveloped by the Center for Applied Special Technology(CAST) and the technology was transferred to Watchfire(http://www.watchfire.com) in the summer of 2002 Bobbycan provide an evaluation of a Web resource based oneither the Section 508 or WCAG requirements Bobby

evalua-Figure 7: Image of the Web-based HTML validation service

offered by the W3C

analyzes the markup used by the author and reports on

known or potential accessibility problems Known

prob-lems are easily identified when markup is missing, for

example, the ALT attribute on an IMG element Other

problems like the accessibility of scripting or the use of

multiple languages in a Web document cannot be easily

determined through a computational analysis and require

the author to manually determine whether there is a

prob-lem In this case Bobby indicates to the user a manual

check is needed to determine accessibility An example port from the Web-based version of Bobby can be viewed

re-in Figure 8

The advantage of using Bobby or a similar tool is thatthe author only needs to deal with the accessibility of themarkup they are actually using For example, if scriptsare not used in a document the report does not includeany information to check the accessibility of scripts Thishelps the author to focus their attention on the problems

of their particular Web-site design, essentially a customset of guidelines for their design style One of the limita-tions of tools like Bobby is when they check for the pres-ence of markup, like ALT attributes for IMG elements,they cannot determine whether the ALT text contentreally represents the use or information the image con-veys For example, some authoring practices and auto-mated authoring tools use the file name of the image as theALT text to satisfy HTML validation requirements Whilesome tools will flag this as a potential problem, others justassume the ALT text is useful and do not report the prob-lem to the evaluator Tools like Bobby usually generate

a large number of manual checks, which require the thor to understand the accessibility requirement and dotheir own analysis of the markup to determine whetherthey satisfy the accessibility requirements An example of

au-a mau-anuau-al check is determining whether color is the onlyway some type of information is being represented (e.g.,text labels for form controls in red to indicate a requiredresponse) Since some people may not be able to see thosecolors the information would not be accessible The mainadvantage of the automation tool is that it narrows thescope of the manual checks to only the requirements

Figure 8: Image of an evaluation report generated by the Bobby Accessibility Evaluation

Web resource

L IMITATIONS OF C URRENT A UTHORING T OOLS 489

Figure 9: A-Prompt evaluation and repair tool.

the author needs to address based on the markup they

used

EVALUATION AND REPAIR

The second generation of accessibility evaluation tools

provides both evaluation and repair services In addition

to identifying known or potential accessibility problems

the second generation tools help the author repair the

doc-ument For example, if an image is missing the ALT text

for an IMG element the repair tool can prompt the user to

add the ALT text within the tool and add it automatically to

the HTML markup The ability to repair content directly

in the tool improves the efficiency of repairing content,

since the author does not need to go back into their

original authoring tool to make the repairs A-Prompt in

Figure 9 is an example of a stand-alone tool that

pro-vides evaluation and repair services Similar evaluation

and repair tools have been developed for HTML authoring

tools LIFT from Usablenet (http://www.usablenet.com)

is an example of a tool that works within Macromedia

Dreamweaver and Microsoft FrontPage to help authors

correct accessibility problems within the authoring tool

Figure 10 shows an example of the LIFT extension for

Dreamweaver

There are clear advantages to incorporating repairfunctions into accessibility automation tools, since au-

thors receive additional guidance in repairing problems

and they do not need to keep switching between the

eval-uation report and the authoring tool to make changes

to the document These types of tools assume that the

user is developing a static Web page and has access to the

source markup Web resources generated through server

side scripts and databases do not benefit from these types

of tools, because the HTML markup is generated by theserver each time a user makes a request to the URI Alsonote that some HTML markup can be repaired throughsimple prompts (like missing ALT text), and other repairswill require more extensive revisions to the content thanmost repair tools can offer

LIMITATIONS OF CURRENT AUTHORING TOOLS

The need for automated accessibility evaluation and pair tools indicates a severe weakness in current HTMLauthoring tools in helping authors intrinsically create ac-cessible materials by default rather than by exception.Ideally authoring tools should make it easier for people

re-to create universally accessible Web resources and guidethem in the use of markup that supports accessibility.Currently authors need to have information on accessi-ble design to create accessible content with most HTMLeditors Some authoring tools actually impede the ability

of the author to create accessible information For ple, in Dreamweaver MX (or earlier), the author cannoteasily use the MAP element (typically, but not limited touse for image maps) to indicate a collection of relatedtext links (i.e., a navigation bar) Dreamweaver warns theuser that this is an invalid use of the markup (appar-ently Dreamweaver has been designed to only supportAREA elements in a MAP container), and the text linkscan only be hand-edited into the code and are not ren-dered in the graphical preview of Dreamweaver However,

exam-it is structural markup like MAP that is crexam-itical for ing the next generation of Web technologies more acces-sible Dreamweaver in this case actually makes it harder

mak-to move mak-to the next level of accessibility

Figure 10: LIFT evaluation and repair tool integrated into Macromedia Dreamweaver.

MICROSOFT POWER POINT

ACCESSIBILITY PLUG-IN

Not all authors use traditional HTML authoring tools to

create content For example, in educational institutions

the most popular Web authoring tools used by

instruc-tors is Microsoft Office Instrucinstruc-tors can use the

famil-iar features of MS Office products and save the content

in an HTML-like format Unfortunately the default Save

features of MS Office produce XML content that can

typi-cally only be viewed in Internet Explorer Authors who are

more inquisitive can change the default settings to

pub-lish as HTML that can be viewed on other browsers, but

this requires additional skill and knowledge on the part

of the author In either case the content developed is not

accessible, and in this case the author does not even have

an option to repair the markup, since Office tools do not

provide a means to even hand edit the resulting HTML (or

XML in some configurations of Office) code

While the current situation with Office is not very good

for publishing accessible Web content, there is

tremen-dous potential with new types of tools to automatically

generate accessible content from Office documents By

using the application programming capabilities of

Of-fice new save options can be added to the OfOf-fice menus

to create accessible content and can guide authors into

adding additional accessibility information An example

is a tool that can convert Microsoft Power Point Slides

into accessible HTML (http://www.rehab.uiuc.edu/office)

It automatically creates parallel linked versions of HTML

slides One set of slides uses primarily text and CSS to vide a highly user customizable version of the slides andthe other is the more traditional graphical version of theslides Each version of the slide is linked to the other so theuser can easily move between a graphical and a text view

pro-of the slides This illustrates another important Web andaccessibility concept: giving users the choice on how theywant to view information Unlike print materials whichbecome more expensive or inconvenient to provide multi-ple views of the same information, there is little cost on theWeb Users can therefore pick the view that works forthem based on their own needs and the task they are trying

to complete The tool also prompts authors for additionalinformation when needed for accessibility However, un-like current evaluation and repair tools the prompts arenontechnical and ask the user for the information, hidingthe HTML coding details Figure 11 shows the prompt forcreating a text equivalent for an image The user is askedabout how the image is used in the presentation and thenguides the author in creating a compatible text equiva-lent

ACCESSIBLE REPAIR OR UNIVERSAL DESIGN?

The main characteristic of both Section 508 and W3CWeb Content Accessibility Guidelines is that they basetheir requirements on a model of an author having al-ready prepared the Web materials (an existing Web site,for example) and is trying to repair the Web site to be more

L AWS AND R EGULATIONS 491

Figure 11: Power Point Web Accessibility Plug-in asking the user the purpose of an

image in the presentation

accessible An alternative approach is based on universal

design and making HTML design choices at the

begin-ning of the design process or totally redesigbegin-ning the Web

resource with more accessible HTML markup techniques

The primary philosophical change for most authors to

move to a universal design model of Web development

is to move away from a graphical view and toward an

in-formation view where the author has preferred rendering

styles, but makes it easy for the user to adapt the rendering

to their technology, personal needs, and preferences This

includes mobile technologies like cell phones and PDAs

using speech interaction techniques or character-oriented

displays similar to the technologies used by people with

disabilities

A detailed discussion of universal design of Web sources is beyond the scope of this chapter The following

re-is a summary of the general approach for the development

of static HTML documents (no scripting effects):

Do not use images to stylize text; instead use text with CSS

styling (including creating visual button effects)

Use HTML header markup (H1–H6), correctly nested, to

indicate new sections and their subsections

Use HTML MAP element to indicate collections of related

text links (navigation bars)

Use HTML list markup to indicate ordered or unordered

lists of information and use CSS list styling to tomize bullets and numbering

cus-Markup document language and language changes with

the LANG attribute

Use HTML LABEL element to indicate the text labels

as-sociated with form controls

Use HTML TABLE markup sparingly for layout ing elements on a page

position-Use CSS background color and image capabilities instead

of images for creating background effects

Do not use images or CSS absolute position features forpositioning; instead use CSS margin and padding toposition information within simple layout tables.Provide text equivalents for all nontext content (i.e., im-ages, audio, and video)

Use the TH element and SCOPE and HEADER attributes

to indicate header cells in data tables, and refer to them

in the associated TD elements that contain the data.Use only valid HTML and CSS techniques; do not supportproprietary extensions of any particular browser andvalidate your documents before publishing them.When these techniques are used it makes the resourcenot only accessible to people with disabilities, but pro-vides all users with more flexibility to access content

LAWS AND REGULATIONS

Many countries including the United States have startedlegally requiring Web accessibility for government andpublic Web sites (Thatcher et al., 2002) In the UnitedStates the Section 508 Web Accessibility requirements ap-ply to federal Web resources There is a weak provision inthe rule that any state receiving technical assistance fundswould also need to comply with the Section 508 require-ments for state agencies Since states were not involved

in the design of the requirements, it is likely most stateswould return the money to remove the requirement if they

felt it was a burden Under ADA and Section 504 the

Re-habilitation Act of 1973 both call for “effective

communi-cation” of information in a timely manner Since the Web

is now a major means of communication of information it

would be hard to argue that providing “effective

commu-nication” of Web information could be done effectiently

through some other medium or technology, since the Web

provides 24-hour by seven-day-a-week access to

informa-tion Therefore the main question is what standard should

be used to determine whether a Web resource is

accessi-ble Right now the Section 508 requirements would

prob-ably be considered the minimum in the United States

since the federal government has adopted them These

requirements are often not enough to provide effective

communication For example, Section 508 does not have

a requirement for including language information

Lan-guage markup is needed for Web sites with more than

one language for speech output systems to know when to

switch to speaking another language Without this most

multilanguage information Web sites are not accessible

These types of Web sites are commonly used in on-line

language foreign language education courses Additional

litigation will probably need to occur before the legal

re-quirements of accessibility are clearly understood

CONCLUSION

The universal design of Web content not only provides

users with disabilities access to Web content, but all users

will have more choices and more control over the

ren-dering of it Just like concrete curb cuts and ramps have

benefited the general population in many ways, the

elec-tronic Web accessibility curb cuts and ramps will benefit

all users of the Web

GLOSSARY

ADA U.S American with Disabilities Act of 1990 that

guarantees the rights of people with disabilities to have

access to public spaces, services, and employment

ATAG W3C Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines

pro-vide authoring tool developers with information on

how to support the creation of accessible Web content

and be more accessible to people with disabilities

ALT text The short description associated with an image

on the Web, in the form alt= “brief description of the

image.”

CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) Cascading Style Sheets is

a W3C technology designed to style HTML and XML

content for rendering in a browser The specifications

began with CSS1 in December 1996, evolved to CSS2

in May 1998, and is currently under development as

CSS3

Disability A visual, hearing, muscular, learning, or

men-tal impairment that substantially limits one or more of

the major life activities of an individual

HTML structure Using the structural markup

capabil-ities of HTML to indicate the relationships between

information in a Web resource

Keyboard shortcuts The ability to use keyboard

com-mands to control software, providing an alternative to

pointing with a mouse to select functions

LONGDESC A URI to a detailed description of an imageand is an attribute of the IMG element

Section 508 U.S Section 508 rules and regulations aredesigned for use by federal agencies to provide access

to services by citizens and accommodations to eral employees with disabilities In December 2000 theElectronic and Information Technology AccessibilityStandards included Web accessibility requirements

fed-Screen magnifier A software program that magnifiestext and graphics, and controls the colors on a graphi-cal computer system

Screen reader A software program used by people whoare blind to have the elements on a computer screenread to them through synthesized speech or refreshableBraille display

Text equivalent A text description associated with text content like images, audio, and video

non-UAAG W3C User Agent Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 vide information to developers of browsers and multi-media players on how to make their technologies moreaccessible

pro-Universal design The design of resources to adapt tothe needs and capabilities of a wide range of users,including people with disabilities

WAI W3C Web Accessibility Initiative is a program of theW3C to promote the accessibility of the Web to peoplewith disabilities through education, design guidelines,and review of Web technologies for accessibility fea-tures

WCAG W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0provide information to Web content authors on how tocreate accessible Web materials

CROSS REFERENCES

See Cascading Style Sheets (CSS); Digital Divide; Electronic Commerce and Electronic Business; HTML/XHTML (Hy- perText Markup Language/Extensible HyperText Markup Language); Human Factors and Ergonomics; Legal, Social and Ethical Issues; Web Site Design.

Americans with Disabilities Act (1990) U.S Public Law 101–336: The Americans with Disabilities Act Retrieved

June 6, 2002 from U.S Department of Justice Web site:http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/ada/pubs/ada.txt

CITA Surveys (2001a) Web masters brown bag survey result Retrieved June 6, 2002 from University of

Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, Illinois Center for tructional Technology Accessibility Web site: http://cita.rehab.uiuc.edu/survey/web-masters-survey-result.html

Ins-CITA Surveys (2001b) ADA Web accessibility workshop survey result Retrieved June 6, 2002 from University

of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, Illinois Center for

F URTHER R EADING 493

Instructional Technology Accessibility Web site: http://

cita.rehab.uiuc.edu/survey/ADA-survey-result.html

Chisholm, W., Vanderheiden, G., & Jacobs, I (1999) W3C

Web content accessibility guidelines Retrieved June 6,

2002, from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)Web site: http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/

Chisholm, W., Vanderheiden, G., & Jacobs, I (1999) W3C

Web content techniques document Retrieved June 6,

2002, from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)Web site: http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10-TECHS/

Jacobs, I., Gunderson, J., & Hansen, E (2002) W3C user

agent accessibility guidelines Retrieved June 6, 2002,

from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web site:

http://www.w3.org/TR/UAAG10Kay, H S (2000, July) Disability and the digital divide

Disability Statistics Abstract, 22.

Lie, W L., & Bos, B (1997) Cascading style sheets

Read-ing, MA: Addison-Wesley

Pernice Coyne, K., & Nielsen, J (2001) Beyond ALT text:

Making the Web easy to use for users with ties Retrieved June 6, 2002, from the Nielsen Norman

disabili-Group Web site: http://www.NNgroup.com/reports/

accessibilityThatcher, J., Bohman, P., Burks, M., Henry, S L., Regan,

B., Swierenga, S., Urban, M., & Waddell, C D (2002)

Accessible Web sites (Chapter 2) United Kingdom:

Glasshaus Ltd

Treviranus, J., McCathieNevile, C., Jacobs, I., & Richards,

R (2000) W3C authoring tool accessibility lines Retrieved June 6, 2002, from the World Wide

guide-Web Consortium (W3C) guide-Web site: http://www.w3.org/TR/ATAG10

U.S Census Bureau (2001) American with disabilities: Household economic studies Washington, DC: U.S.

Information Technology Technical Assistance and ing Center (ITTATC): http://www.ittatc.org/

Train-National Center on Accessible Media:http://ncam.wgbh.org/CAST: http://www.cast.org

Webable: http://www.webable.comUsablenet: http://www.usablenet.comAdobe: http://access.adobe.comIBM: http://www-3.ibm/ableMicrosoft: http://www.microsoft.com/enableSUN: http://www.sun.com/access/

Unix Operating System

Mark Shacklette, The University of Chicago

BABEL: The Commercialization of Unix 498

How to Recognize a Unix System When You

Write Small Programs That Do One

Write Programs to Communicate Over

Unix is a powerful operating system that began life in the

late 1960s and has continued to exert a powerful influence

on operating systems to this day The Unix operating

tem is known as a multiuser, multitasking operating

sys-tem This means that more than one user can be logged

into and execute multiple programs on the system at the

same time Most people intuitively believe that personal

computers were first introduced by IBM in the late 1970s

with the delivery of the IBM Personal Computer In

re-ality, computers were, for the most part, personal

com-puters from the very beginning, in the sense that most

computers only allowed one user to work on the

com-puter at a given time In addition, that single user would

only be able to run a single program at a given time This

notion of one user running one program after another

is a concept known as batch sequential processing

Pro-grams that individual users would want to run would be

scheduled as a “batch.” The various programs in a batch

would be run one after the other, until the batch was

completed

Before Unix, programs would be entered on punch

cards, or “IBM cards,” and these cards would be placed

into a machine called a card reader The system would

then execute the program Output from these programs,

known as “jobs,” would be in the form of paper printouts

from a printer A programmer would know the results of

her program only when the job was completed and output

had been produced from the printer If a mistake (often

called a “bug”) was discovered, the bug would have to be

resolved, new cards created, and the entire process

exe-cuted again—a time-consuming, tedious, and laborious

process by any standard

Unix is an operating system written by programmersfor programmers Programmers were tired of having towork with punch cards, and having to wait, sometimesfor hours or even days, for the results of their program Itwas a waste of valuable time How much nicer it would be

to be able to enter programs directly into the computer bytyping at a terminal and submitting the program directly

to the operating system to run—to run immediately and toallow multiple programmers to do this at the same time.Enter Unix

HISTORY

Early History (1969–1972)

The history of the Unix operating system is itself a storyfull of intrigue, lawsuits, corporate and federal politics,budgetary concerns, computer games, antitrust law, law-suits, resourcefulness, and, when the going got rough,subterfuge It is a story about a few very smart peoplearmed with a few very good ideas The story reads at timeslike any great spy novel, full of plots and subplots, intrigu-ing personalities, battles for territory, winners and losers

It even has a chapter on the illegal and surreptitious derground transmission of contraband books It is a storywhose participants seem compelled, like some ancientbearded mariner, to tell and retell, if for no other reasonthan to remind ourselves and the world that good ideas arealways possible, always to be valued, and sometimes, justsometimes, may win through pure unabashed brilliance

un-In the end, the story of Unix is an unlikely story, a storythat at any of a number of points in its development mightnot have happened at all, were it not for the commingling

of those few very good ideas in the minds of those fewsmart people That, of course, and the subterfuge

494

H ISTORY 495

In the Beginning: Multics

“Plan to throw one away; you will, anyhow.” These words

are from a chapter in Frederick Brooks’s seminal work on

software development, The Mythical Man-Month (Brooks,

1995) His point is that the first attempt at something new

in software is always a learning experience fraught with

the unknown, and wherever “a new system concept or new

technology is used, one has to build a system to throw

away, for even the best planning is not so omniscient as

to get it right the first time” (p 116) In the case of the

Unix operating system, the one that was thrown away

(albeit reluctantly) was Multics, an acronym that officially

stood for “Multiplexed Information and Computing

Ser-vice” but which also stood for, according to one

tongue-in-cheek oral tradition, “Many Unnecessarily Large Tables

in Core Simultaneously.” Multics (not capitalized) began

life in 1964 as a joint collaboration between three

insti-tutions: General Electric, the Massachusetts Institute of

Technology (MIT), and AT&T Bell Telephone Laboratories

(BTL) It ended its life only in 2000, when the last Multics

computer was turned off at the Canadian Department of

National Defence

Multics was an attempt to experiment with a number

of new ideas in operating systems research Before

Mul-tics, operating systems tended to be monolithic, written in

a native low-level assembly language, with “flat” file

sys-tems that did not allow multiple users access Many of

these early operating systems could not do several things

at the same time, and often resorted to running different

user programs back to back, or sequentially, in a mode

that is called “batch processing.” One of the primary goals

of the Multics operating system was to provide a

time-sharing system that allowed multiple users to work on

the system simultaneously with safety, security, and

in-tegrity The original goal was to support several hundred

simultaneous users (Daley & Dennis, 1968)

The Multics operating system was notable for ting to provide among other things, within a single

attemp-operating system, a shared-memory multiprocessing

environment But the three most interesting aspects of

Multics for our purpose were its emphasis on using a high

level language (PL/1) for its implementation (as opposed

to a machine-dependent assembly language), its notion of

extracting the command processor user interface (shell)

from the kernel into a separate user (selectable) program,

and its implementation of the first hierarchical file system

A hierarchical file system is a file system that supports a

compositional structure, that is, directories are files that

can contain other files, including other directories, a

com-monplace in modern operating systems today (thanks to

Multics and later Unix) but a somewhat radical concept

in 1964

The result of this design was that only a small portion

of the operating system had to be written in assembly

guage Writing the operating system in a high-level

lan-guage afforded the possibility of more easily porting the

operating system over onto disparate hardware platforms

This notion of writing the operating system in a high-level

language was a new one This notion of portability was

one of many features of Unix that was derived from

Mul-tics, others included the concept of making the command

interface (also known as the shell) just “another user

pro-gram like the others.” Literal carryover in command ing, such as “ls” (list directory), “pwd” (print working di-rectory), and the notion of an online help system (“man”

nam-in Unix) all derived from Multics

The joint collaboration between General Electric, MIT,and Bell Labs was, in the case of the latter, centered atthe Murray Hill, New Jersey, Computer Research Group’s(CRG) laboratory The Multics development machine atthe labs was a dual processor General Electric 645 com-puter, a slow machine by today’s standards, operatingonly a little faster than the original IBM PC A 1000 Mhz

Pentium III is roughly 2,000 times faster than the GE

645

All was not well with Multics and the joint venture.Before tuning, the system could only support a few simul-taneous users (remember the goal of hundreds of simul-taneous users) After tuning, by 1969, a Multics systemcould support about 30 users per processor Nevertheless,performance was erratic and ran on expensive hardware;

as a result, Bell Telephone Laboratories (BTL) had seenenough of the Multics effort and pulled out of the triumvi-rate in the spring of 1969 This greatly saddened a num-ber people in the CRG, including one hyper-productivebearded individual by the name of Ken Thompson AfterBTL pulled out of the Multics project, the GE 645 waspacked up and carted off, and Ken and a couple of hiscolleagues, Dennis Ritchie and Rudd Canaday, were leftwithout a toy

This was the summer of 1969, remember, and the

na-tion and the world was captured by the Apollo missions

and just about to witness a frightening several days when

Jim Lovell and crew aboard the Apollo 13 flight were

go-ing to use the Moon’s gravity to whip them back home

to Earth Ken Thompson had been playing around with acomputer game he had written on the now-missing Mul-tics machine “Space Travel” was a space orbit simulatorthat cost Ken’s department $50 to $75 an hour to play

on the GE 645 timesharing system Even with that pense, the Multics operating system running on the oldmachine could hardly keep up with the hyperbolic calcu-lations that were needed to run the game efficiently SoKen found himself simultaneously without an operatingsystem to work on and without a computer on which toplay Space Travel This situation was, of course, entirelyunacceptable Something had to be done, and done fast

ex-A “Little-Used PDP-7”

After pulling out of the Multics project by BTL, Ken’sgroup naively petitioned the powers that were at BTLfor the purchase of a brand new DEC 10, at a cost ofaround $120,000 Why? they were asked Their responsewas so they could write a brand-new operating systemthat looked a lot like Multics The answer that came back

somewhat bluntly basically said, “What part of no don’t

you understand?”

Ever resourceful and constitutionally incapable of tigue, Ken found an old (and even outdated by that time)PDP 7 computer lying unused in the corner of an officeand decided to port Space Travel onto it The game ran,but very slowly Space Travel was in desperate need of a filesystem to support its planet information, and with theirexperience of the Multics hierarchical file system, Dennis