Mobile devices Toolkit

W3C challenges developers on mobile Web

Tags:
Development,
Usability,
Mobile Web,
Accessibility

Jonathan Bennett Builder UK

Published: 16 Nov 2005 18:20 GMT

p>The next challenge facing Web developers is to make their sites accessible to mobile users, according to the W3C. At an event to promote its Mobile Web Initiative (MWI), held on Tuesday in London, members of the consortium outlined their vision for a single Web, usable from both the desktop and handheld devices.

Speaking in a video recorded address to the event, W3C chair Tim Berners-Lee said that in the future the majority of Web users will be using mobile devices. "There's such a huge growth in the wide variety of these little gadgets that we use, not only for talking into, but now for accessing the Web, that the number of people accessing the Web on those devices is going to rapidly outpace the number of people accessing the Web using fixed computers."

The idea behind MWI is to ensure Web developers create sites that are as usable on handheld devices with small screens as they are on traditional large-screen PCs. Berners-Lee said this would make the difference between this initiative and previous efforts to bring the Web to mobiles. "It's really important as this explosion happens, that we have one information space" he added. "It's not about the mobile Web as a separate Web, it's about making the Web mobile. If we make the Web of today work on the variety of devices that we can imagine today, we can design it in a way that makes it independent of device."

Use of the Web on mobile phones has been disappointing, given the number of Web-capable devices in use today. There are over 1.1 billion Web-enabled handsets in use worldwide, but only 25 percent of these are used for browsing. Some believe this is down to poor experiences, both of previous attempts at a mobile Web and the current state of the art. Phillip Hoschka, W3C deputy director, likened using the Web on handhelds today with the Web in 1995, where there were problems with interoperability, speed, protecting children from inappropriate content and accessibility. However, he also said the potential for the mobile Web is much greater since content, providers and millions of users already exist. Franklin Davis, head of business development at Nokia, was among those who went further — he said "By 2015 most people will have access to most of human knowledge wherever they are, all the time."

The Mobile Web Initiative consists of two working groups; the Mobile Best Practices group and the Device Description Group. The former is charged with creating guidelines on how to make Web content accessible to mobile users, and the latter is to look at the current capabilities of mobile devices and create a way of describing these and future capabilities to Web developers.

The Best Practice Working Group hopes to create developer guidelines quickly, before a large amount of work is done on the mobile Web. Daniel Appelquist, senior technology strategist for Vodafone and chair of the working group said "We know we have a limited window of applicability for these guidelines and we want to get them out there as soon as possible."