How Web 2.0 Supports the Accessibility for the Visual Impaired People - Term Paper Example

Download file to see previous pages The history of the hypertext has been very rich and has witnessed many transitions since its inception. The early systems developed for hypertext were massive and closed, however, the modern researchers and developers have introduced more openness and flexibility in the current system. The current systems can be integrated with different tools for example text editors, browsers, etc. Hypertext, at first was not coupled with such graphical support as we experience in the current systems [2].

Vannevar Bush can be termed as the ‘grandfather’ of hypertext as he was the man who proposed a system ‘Memex’ 1 in 1945, which we now describe as hypertext system. This idea was devised due to his worries about scientific information overload and incapability for even the specialist to follow the developments in a particular field. Then after twenty years, Doug Engelbart started his work in 1962 towards such ideas. In 1965, the word hypertext was given by ‘Ted Nelson’; who is known as an early hypertext pioneer. He developed the Xanadu system with the basic idea that everything that anybody has ever written should be under one medium to facilitate comprehensive research. A very well known commercial product ‘Knowledge Management System’ came out in 1983; it was meant to manage large hypertexts with tens of thousands of nodes. Then in 1986; Guide became the first well-known commercial hypertext system; it was released for Macintosh. The guide had the support for 3 different types of hypertext link: Replacement, pop-ups, and jumps. Then finally the 1990s witnessed rapid development in hypertext under the specifications of Tim Berners-Lee; Mosaic became the widely used browser for WWW in Jan 1993. The main difference of success of WWW as compared to Xanadu has been its open system nature and ability of backward compatibility with legacy data [18].   ...Download file to see next pagesRead More