Summer 2007
$2.5M for interface design to create better Web experience
The University of Toronto recently received $2.5 million from the U.S.-based Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in support of a U of T-led project that will help universities worldwide provide more consistent and accessible Web services to all users, including those with special needs.
The collaborative project, called FLUID, is being led by Jutta Treviranus, director of the Adaptive Technology Resource Centre (ATRC), housed at U of T's Faculty of Information Studies. Her group will help develop and distribute modular, reusable, swappable interface components for Web applications and build the software architecture to support their implementation. FLUID will also raise awareness in academic Web culture about the importance of good design.
"The architecture and tools we provide will help ensure that people building various Web applications within a large institution use similar components and make it easier for builders to adapt those components for the individual needs of students and educators," says Treviranus. "The end result will be a library of high quality, accessible, usable user-interface components that universities and any large organization around the world can use - ultimately a better Web experience for users."
FLUID's core partners are the University of California at Berkeley, University of Cambridge, University of British Columbia and York University (in addition to many other participating universities worldwide). Corporate partners include IBM, Sun Microsystems and Yahoo and participating community source software projects include Sakai, uPortal, Moodle and Kuali Student. The overall project budget for this phase of FLUID is well over $8 million with more than $3.5 million to be spent at the University of Toronto.
Please visit www.fluidproject.org or www.atrc.utoronto.ca for more information.
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