Toward an information society for all: HCI challenges and R&D recommendations

This article reports on the results of the second meeting and workshop of t he International Scientific Forum, "Towards an information Society for All, " that took place in Crete, Greece, Tune 15-16, 1998. In particular, it ela borates on the international research and development agenda (Stephanidis e t al., 1998), which resulted from the first meeting and workshop of the For um in San Francisco, California, on August 29, 1997, in the context of the HCI International '97 Conference. This article elaborates on the proposed r esearch and development agenda by identifying human-computer interaction ch allenges and clusters of concrete recommendations for international collabo rative research and technological development (RTD) activities. Four cluste rs of recommendations are proposed. The first three facilitate reaching tec hnological targets, and the fourth comprises accompanying measures. The thr ee technological clusters concern the corresponding transitions from (a) pr oductivity tools to environments of use, (b) individual users to communitie s of users, and (c) computer-assisted business tasks to computer-mediated h uman activities. The fourth cluster covers support (horizontal) actions nee ded to establish a favorable environment for the creation of an information society acceptable to all citizens. Each cluster is elaborated by means of specific recommendations, plausible RTD objectives, and likely or expected outcomes.