2007/12/03 - Setup an area for CCF work on oatsoft.org
2007/07/03 - With the Bliss Think Tank coming up in July'07 we've been busy hacking more demonstrators for the Concept Coding Framework (CCF). Mats, Bengt and Lars have been busy fine-tuning the SYMBERED system (CCF support for CMS - using PHP, MySQL, Java). I've been busy working on a .NET infrastructure and building a central CCF ontology in SQLServer. The database I've been working with is now populated with around 9000 concepts (based on the STANDUP project ontology) and around 3000 bliss symbols (some of which are mapped to concept codes). There is an prototype asp.net website where you can search the ontologies, update the bliss-ccf mappings, write ruby annotated bliss messages (then you can copy the source to your own website like i've done below), and most recently I've started on a prototype asp.net webservice to provide access to the CCF... this can then be used by other sofware / web applications... e.g. FoxySymbols... which I'll start working on again.
2007/01/24 - CCF website has been archived into a simple page (for now atleast)... i had thought about other routes (e.g. cms / wiki) but since we're not doing much work on it at the moment that seemed to be overkill. If you have any enquiries please get in touch with me (I was the lead researcher on the Concept Coding part of the WWAAC project), I am trying in what little spare time I have right now to continue to evolve the work. Another person worth getting in touch with would be Mats Lundalv who's the lead on SYMBERED project that is continuing this work in Sweden. If you've got a hardcore techie question and want an equivalent answer then the you'd be best getting in touch with Bengt Farre. Although the CCF research is currently in limbo, it is something we're keen to discuss and develop further... it clearly made in impact in the AAC and Web Accessibility communities and it would be a real shame if it doesn't get developed further. If you have ideas / want to get involved please do get in touch with me.
Around the world, people with impaired communication, including difficulties to read or write, may use symbols as an alternative or complement to character based texts. Referencing to, and exchanging these alternatively coded messages over the Internet is difficult due to the lack of standardised encoding schemes and common practises. This site is intended to motivate, describe and promote the introduction and adoption of a common, open and vendor neutral Concept Coding Framework (CCF) to overcome some of these difficulties. In particular will act as a base for all contribution to this work - be it formal documentation or informal discussions.
The suggested CCF has been carefully designed to be conformant to the standard language technologies that are rapidly developing and penetrating the Internet communities. In this way we believe that the proposed CCF can contribute to a major leap in bridging between different technologies and products developed for AAC users and, more importantly, between these Assistive Technologies (AT) and the main-stream technologies of today's and tomorrow's networked information society.
The bridging approach also implies that the CCF is not intended to replace and exclude the use and development of current and future proprietary assistive technologies in the AAC field. Instead the CCF and its bridging technology and tools are designed to provide added value for all stake-holders; AAC users, special product developers and service providers, as well as general service and information providers who want to support improved accessibility to their products.
Designed to be used over the Internet for email, web-based activities, chat and/or other emerging Internet based services, the CCF technology can, however, be used by software manufacturers also to provide additional functionality, enhanced support for, and integration of, software and systems with multi-modal language features mainly intended for local use.
Although, this work is part of the EU funded WWAAC project, the concept coding work is to be kept open source as we want to collaborate with experts and stakeholders in both the AAC field and internet technologies/accessibility area. Thus we are wanting to use this area to establish an interest group in the concept coding approach. if you are interested in getting involved at whatever level then please contact us.
These are some of the most relevant links i can think of to share, if you have others, please add them.
research projects
web accessibility resources (general)
web accessibility resources (learning difficulties)
technologies
miscellaneous