The next generation of the Web is relying on new technologies to build rich interfaces and applications which enable community, collaboration, social networking and enhanced interactions. This has implications for people with disabilities who have come to rely on the Web to provide more independence, work opportunities, and social interactions. New specifications such as Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) are being developed which provide more semantic information about Web components and can enable enhanced accessibility. In addition, toolkits and testing tools are making it easier to reach the nirvana of accessibility by default in Web 2.0 projects.

Web 2.0 is a new approach to Web content, making it more interactive and allowing sites to combine features in new ways. This change in paradigm brings new challenges to people with disabilities. Accessibility advocates must develop solutions rapidly. Semantic Web technologies address some of these requirements, and accessibility innovation may be part of a convergence of the Web 2.0 and Semantic Web.

The goal of Semantic Web research is to transform the Web from a linked document repository into a distributed knowledge base and application platform, thus allowing the vast range of available information and services to be more effectively exploited. As a first step in this transformation, languages such as RDF and OWL have been developed; these languages are designed to capture the knowledge that will enable applications to better understand Web accessible resources, and to use them more intelligently. Although realising the Semantic Web still seems some way off, OWL has already been very successful, and has rapidly become a de facto standard for ontology development in fields as diverse as geography, geology, astronomy, agriculture, defence and the life sciences. An important factor in this success has been the availability of sophisticated tools with built in reasoning support. In this talk I will introduce OWL and OWL based tools, and explore the impact that they are having in ontology development and application. I will then go on to discuss some of the shortcomings of OWL, and of the available tool support, that have been identified in such applications, and to present recent work, such as the OWL 1.1 proposal, that addresses these shortcomings.

I have followed the accessibility trail for many years and seen many changes. In 1990 I evaluated a speech driven interface to a DOS based wordprocessor (yes really!!) for motor impaired users. I built the Voice Web browser BrookesTalk which parses HTML pages and won awards in 1998, and is now unsupported as it simply parses HTML and can't handle HTML add-ons, although the Spanish version is still used by blind children in Chile because it's free.

I now use Voice XML to gain speech access to the web for older adults, and am involved in the conversion of SVG to speech, which could make those web based county council bus maps accessible to blind users, and of course there is Web 2.0!

A large proportion of older adults are still not exactly rushing to use the Web even though the services they find there could save them effort and money, all of which they are usually very keen to preserve!

I will attempt to work out if anything has changed much, and if it has why.

Web 2.0 offers new ways of working with technology, new forms of socialisation, new groups you can join, new games you can play. I will look at people who have gained greater accessibility through Web 2.0, for example the blind user who now streams the content for his blog from his iPod and the dyslexic user who builds her blog out of photos from her phone with minimal captions. I will also look at those who have tried and failed to gain access to the Web, despite encouragement from family and friends, and those who remain untouched by Web 2.0 because they find it inaccessible, and uninteresting.

We are here to make the Web accessible; we need to listen to the people on the ground. Older adults in particular, who frequently experience a whole range of disabilities, have changing perceptions, computer skills, and capabilities on the Web, which should be recognised. We should be vigilant in remaining flexible to changing circumstance, and search out opportunities to increase accessibility, as and when they present themselves.