: ACCESSIBILITY AND SECURITY

Accessibility and Security

Accessibility and Security

Introduction

    The rapid growth of mobile telephony has fueled the expansion of the mobile Internet as a foundation for mobile commerce m-commerce. M-commerce is a key part of ucommerce. The web-enabled mobile devices allow mcommerce to be conducted anytime and anywhere. The advent of m-commerce has fueled much anticipation of its future possibilities.

Discussion

     Though m-commerce has constraints incurred by mobile device, a full-blown m-commerce future is expected considering the following three aspects. First, not only are there more mobile devices available today than before, they have also developed more rapidly than the PC. Second, users are much more familiar with mobile devices than the PC, even with constant connectivity. Lastly, spot services with mobile devices can be provided much more easily than with the PC or TV.

As mobile telephones begin to incorporate web browser functionality, consumers are poised to take advantage of virtual storefronts. With the development of the mobile Internet, despite its lofty expectations, mobile shopping has not received a good response from the market so far. Only the sound of ring tones, call connection bell sounds, and character and lottery are popular. The transaction activity of real products failed to attract the customer's attention. There are four reasons: expensiveness of connection fees, inconvenience of mobile payments, and difficulty in getting real product information, and small displays and inconvenient input devices (Thuraisingham 1997).

Mobile commerce applications promise to be very successful with today's attributes and tomorrow's attributes. The general characteristics of today's mobile Internet are ubiquity, reachability, security, and convenience. Ubiquity is a trait that allows users to download and use the real-time information wherever they are. Reachability is a feature that allows users to reach the Internet from any place at any time. Security is the capability that protects information and data from unauthorized persons or systems. Convenience is the notion that the mobile device should be light, thin, short and small. These four characteristics are the main features of current mobile communications, but for future-oriented m-business development, localization, instant connectivity and personalization must be added. In detail, localization is the characteristic of being able to show the current position of the customer at a specific time, and instant connectivity is the feature of being able to search for the right information as fast as possible. Personalization is the mobile user's individualization and differentiated customer service. For m-business to be successful, a new business model which makes full use of these three newly-added mobile characteristics - localization, instant connectivity and personalization - is essential.

Accessibility Policy

    Act 1227 of 1999 required the Arkansas Department of Information Systems to develop Non-visual Standards for Arkansas that ensures the needs of Arkansans who are blind or visually impaired are met through reasonable accommodation in the information technology products and services of the state.  Information technology products and services include data, voice, and video technologies, as well as information dissemination methods such as the Internet.

In essence, this means that Arkansas Government or state funded entities must have websites that are ...