Draft invitation to a presentation on the potential of user preference media queries for personalization on the web

Niklas Schildhauer, a student of mobile media at Stuttgart Media University,
in his bachelor thesis has looked into the new "user preference media
features", as proposed for  <https://www.w3.org/TR/mediaqueries-5/> Media
Queries Level 5. He examined how these and
<https://www.w3.org/WAI/APA/wiki/Media_features_use_cases_for_personalizatio
n> other candidates for media features, as proposed by the W3C APA working
group, could be used to enable user interface personalisation on the web and
how web users can benefit from this. He also developed a
<https://gitlab.mi.hdm-stuttgart.de/ns107/ba-mq5> polyfill script that makes
these media features available for web authors using current web browsers.
Furthermore, he designed
<https://gpii.eu/mq-5/example/registration/index.html> example webpages that
demonstrate how the proposed media features can be used to provide a
personalized user experience.

In a nutshell, his findings are:

-          Two of the new media features in MQ-L5 are already supported by
browser manufacturers. 

-          The media features prefers-reduced-motion, forced-colors,
prefers-contrast and prefers-reduced-transparency were found to be important
contributions to web accessibility. People with vestibular disorders and
visual impairments will benefit from them. 

-          As there is a wide range of disabilities,
<https://www.w3.org/WAI/APA/wiki/Media_features_use_cases_for_personalizatio
n> other media features, as suggested by the W3C APA working group, were
investigated and their potential benefits for web accessibility were
identified. Some can help to make a website easier to use, some can be used
to display alternative content to the user when visiting a page. 

-          Especially important for accessibility are a proposed new
environment variable session-timeout and proposed new media feature
extended-session-timeout. These would enable a new way to adapt the session
timeout of a web page to the needs of an individual without extending the
default session timeout. 

On Wed Mar 10 at 12 noon EST, Niklas Schildhauer will give a 20-min
presentation. He will provide a summary of his findings and demonstrate his
polyfill scripts on example webpages. There will be time for a short
discussion on implications on personalization aspects on the web.

 

Best regards,

Gottfried 

 

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 Prof. Dr. Gottfried Zimmermann

Access Technologies Group, Germany

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