That mobile is increasingly used for browsing is undisputed however it’s my firm belief that the rise and rise of social networking is a key factor inspiring more and more people to browse on mobiles, hand-helds and other devices. As Opera’s State of the Mobile Web Report said back in April 2008 “…almost 40% of traffic worldwide is to social networks. In some countries, such as the United States, South Africa and Indonesia, the social Web accounts for more than 60% of the traffic.”

As interest in sending your mate a virtual gummy bear or having a quick poke on Facebook wanes I think we’ll see a shift towards social networks growing up this year and adding services that truly add value to our daily lives and how we communicate. The opportunity this offers for people with disabilities and older people is huge as being able to store, mine and share information at key times when you are on various devices could be invaluable. Imagine if you’re blind for example, and a first year student at university lost on campus and looking for your lecture hall. Being able to plug into a network with your classmates or campus representatives to quickly find out where you are and get directions would be invaluable. So too would be being able to find an accessible restaurant with friendly and decent staff tagged by people you trust if you’re a wheel chair user out and about.

In his presentation Adding context to location, Julien Pye from Vodafone, likened social networks to Jill Price who suffers from hyperthymesia, a condition where you have an autobiographical memory and forget nothing. While in part a blessing this is also a curse as sufferers are not able to prioritise and filter memories. Social networks store all your history and the history of others you are connected with across multiple networks. Being able to mine this intelligently and filter information based on location or context means that you could drown out status updates about a mate having coffee in Canberra but be updated if that same mate is round the corner in your favorite coffee shop.

So I’m wondering, as 2009 kicks in with all it’s economic doom and gloom, if social networks in their bid to find new ways to monetise and stay relevant, will start to break down the walls between respective networks and offer real services that users benefit from in daily life. Site owners would do well to take into account interface design issues for people with disabilities and the aging for reasons that go beyond just inclusion. Disabled users are hardcore user testers with their needs pushing the capabilities and possibilities of what technology can offer users in general. Add to this that having grown up with the web and social networking we fully expect to be able to use our favorite sites later in life as we grow old these two groups are too important to ignore. I certainly don’t plan on dying young anyway.

Presentation slides and original paper

My slides Social networking across devices: opportunity and risk for disabled and older users are available in HTML and best viewed in Opera (download a copy of Opera) using Opera Show. To view them simply hit View then Full screen or Alt+F11 if on a PC, and on a Mac Opt+F11. You an also download a PDF copy of the original paper.

Links and things

• Check out the full list of workshop papers.
• Future of Social Networking official report – findings and next steps.
• Business model for open and distributed social networks – Henry Story
• Face to Facebook: social networks hit the street – location based updates to your mobile.
• The tangled web we weave (and in PDF – new window) .
• Do you want this activity stream on your mobile phone? – managing multiples streams of updates on your mobile.
• Links on my delicious account on the Future of Social Networking (#w3csn)
• Wiihab anyone? How access across devices could be a lifesaver

We looked into getting her a Wii Fit thinking that this could be perfect for her; something to do in the house, much more engaging than just dull repetitive exercises that the doctor ordered, and also something that would get her used to technology.

Wiihab, using Wii Fit to help in the rehabilitation of people with physical problems, has become increasingly used in hospitals, old age homes and rehab. Rather than put people through mind numbingly boring and often painful exercises the Wii is perfect for doing those all important exercises whilst at the same time taking your mind of the pain. So far it has proven to be a hit with people suffering from Multiple Sclerosis, brain tumours, strokes and much more.

What I particularly love about it is that grand parents can do this with grand children and use it as a fun thing. I remember all to well visiting my grandpa as a child when he was ill and being quite daunted by the amount of medical equipment he was having to live with; having a Wii to play with would have removed a lot of the awkwardness and made his house feel less like a hospital ward. More recently, my friend’s sister, who is just 38 and a Mum of three, had a stroke. After mentioning the Wii to her she is now able to play with her kids and hang out with them thanks to a spot of Wiihab making it not only a great way to exercise but also to break down the fear factor of illness.

I’m off to the Future of Social Networking W3C workshop in Barcelona today and will be speaking about Social Networking: opportunity and risk for disabled and older users across devices. I’ve been having interesting chats with my team about Wiihab and social networking, especially with my colleague Lawrence Eng who does an amazing job looking after our users asking people what they want and researching existing and new features for the browser. As part of my talk I’ll be discussing how accessible social networks can, and are, being used in medicine and in particular looking at how a network for people in Wiihab could help patients if they were able to join a group, share scores, motivate and support one another. This would also be a great way for carers and doctors to stay in touch with the progress that patients make. The beauty of this is that it can all be done using Opera on the Wii.

All this goes to underpin how making accessibility across devices is the way forward. We may all mostly access the web by desktop and then possibly followed by mobile but there are plenty of people who only use mobile (developing countries for example) or may only use a Wii, their TV or some other device.

The video below is a news report from CNET interviewing a doctor in the States and some of his patients who have been using Wii Fit. I don’t have a transcript I’m afraid but have added it to Dotsub in the hope we can crowdsource some transcripts. You can also watch it using Easy YouTube.

Update: Check out Mershon Hinkel’s wonderful blog about Wiihab rehabilitative therepy. Mershon has practiced occupational therapy for over 25 years and is an expert in Wiihab rehabilitative techniques using the Wii and other interactive devices. She is also interested in hearing from others around the world who may be working or have experience in this area.

I find it interesting that Japanese is the first language that the site has been localised in but as Twitter reported in their blog they were noticing a high volume of users and Twitters originating from Japan which drove them in their decision to localise into Japanese. This is very much in keeping with what I’ve heard elsewhere about social networking sites: you never know what region your site is going to take off in so site owners tend to internationalise and localise into languages where they already have market share rather than where they want to build a presence. Both Facebook and Flickr have followed this path.

What is really great is that by releasing translated versions social networking sites are really putting internationalisation back on the agenda for website owners and developers in general. Previously internationalisation was the domain of global corporates where as now it’s more relevant to sites we use more regularly.

To see the Japanese version you’ll need to select the Japanese option from the drop down select box. Not a great idea as many Japanese users may not understand what “Select language” means. Ideally Twitter should code the English and Japanese as HTML text and remove the drop down. Translating the TITLE of the page would also help wannabe Japanese Twitterers.

I’ve not checked it out under the bonnet but if you have leave a comment and let everyone know what you think.

The focus of the session was to walk blind and partially sighted users through how to blog using WordPress, use Twitter, Facebook and what poscasting tools there were out there. It was a really well thought out presentation which was written up in a WordPress blog together with tools, resources and links. This was made all the better as everyone was sat at a laptop or PC all of which had a screen reader running so you could read it yourself, follow links and best of all leave comments.

Twitter was the area Mika seemed most excited about and talked the most in depth about. In fact his enthusiasm was such that when he asked how many people in the room used Twitter only two said yes (we were a group of maybe 40). By the end of the session people were signing up and following his feed.

Most social networking sites have a way to go to make them truly accessible to all users with disabilities, and not just people with sight impairments, but it is great to see people taking advantage of these tools as far as they can. I’m a true believer in signing up to Facebook, Twitter and blogging in order to spread the word about web accessibility as well as keep up to date with what is going on.

Part of my decision to start twittering is so that I can keep up to date with what various groups or companies of interest are up to. Some of my favorites include:

Knowbility – a group promoting accessibility to technology in the States who also run accessibility rallies.

WASP – a grassroots coalition fighting for standards which ensure simple, affordable access to web technologies for all.

24Ways – articles covering all aspects of web design.

WHATG – Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group

The Web Access Centre – (plug) the RNIB’s consulting arm that promotes access to the web.

I’ll be posting tidbits that I hear and stumble upon from the world of the internets, conferences and the great and good involved with making the web standards based and world wide – all sounds very worthy doesn’t it!

And if I do start talking about my window boxes then block me – I’ll soon get the message.