Axisto Media - list of terms and phrases.

A webcast is similar in intent to a broadcast television program but designed for internet transmission. Webcast clients allow a user to connect to a server, which is distributing (webcasting) the webcast, and displays the televisual content to the user.

Initially webcasts were non interactive, in other words, the user was not able to alter the content of the webcast or to interact with the subjects of the webcast. For the most part they were also hosted live (with recordings retained for later dissemination), however more recently there has been greater overlap between video conferencing and webcasting such that webcasts have been generally consigned to being recordings of video conferences and training material where there is much less demand for an interactive session.

Streaming media is media that is consumed (read, heard, viewed) while it is being delivered. Although it is generally used in the context of certain content types ("streaming audio", "streaming video", etc), streaming is more a property of the delivery systems employed to distribute that content.

The distinction is usually applied to media that are distributed over computer networks; most other delivery systems are either inherently streaming (radio, television) or inherently non-streaming (books, video cassettes, audio CDs).

Web-pages that contain an embedded media player, this enables video to be played inside the web-page without the need to launch a separate player screen. Axisto Media creates specialist web-page templates with embedded media players that can be incorporated into most leading content management systems.

The ability to access, select and play media files at the users convenience, at any time from any location. Users also have the ability to skip through media content and play only those segments that they are interested in listening to or viewing.

Web accessibility refers to the practice of making Web pages on the Internet accessible to all users, especially those with disabilities. This primarily comprises users who are:

- blind

- sight impaired (e.g. various common types of poor eyesight, various types of colour blindness)

- motor impaired (e.g. Parkinson's Disease, muscular dystrophy, cerebral palsy, stroke)

- cognitively impaired (i.e. poor short-term memory [as commonly caused by senile dementia], dyslexia)

- hearing impaired or deaf

- non-native speakers of the website's language(s) (including users of sign languages)

The Royal National Institute of the Blind (RNIB) is a United Kingdom charity, which was set up to lobby for and help people who are blind or partially sighted. Their patron is the Queen.

Internet Broadcast Archive & Clipping ? Linked to a the IBAC System - A media system that takes in a standard digital broadcast feed and that enables; live transcoding (re-encoding) / archiving storage / near-live clipping / content management and content distribution of video and audio content. The system is used to create new media content services for re-distribution over the Internet & mobile (3G) platforms.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international consortium where member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public, work together to develop standards for the World Wide Web. W3C's mission is: "To lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing protocols and guidelines that ensure long-term growth for the Web". W3C also engages in education and outreach, develops software, and serves as an open forum for discussion about the Web. The Consortium is headed by Tim Berners-Lee, the original creator of the World Wide Web and primary author of the URL (Uniform Resource Locator), HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) and HTML (HyperText Markup Language) specifications, the principal technologies that form the basis of the Web.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)'s Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) is an effort to improve the accessibility of the World Wide Web (WWW or Web), especially, but not only, for people with disabilities.

The W3C was founded in 1994 to advance the Web. It is responsible for the development of uniform protocols to assure the interoperability of the Web. The WAI, part of the W3C, has developed a number of guidelines that can help to make Web sites more accessible, especially from the view of physically disabled people.

In computing, HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is a markup language designed for the creation of web pages and other information viewable in a browser. HTML is used to structure information ? denoting certain text as headings, paragraphs, lists and so on ? and can be used to describe, to some degree, the appearance and semantics of a document.

Originally defined by Tim Berners-Lee and further developed by the IETF with a simplified SGML syntax, HTML is now an international standard (ISO/IEC 15445:2000). Later HTML specifications are maintained by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

Early versions of HTML were defined with looser syntactic rules which helped its adoption by those unfamiliar with web publishing. Web browsers commonly made assumptions about intent and proceeded with rendering of the page. Over time, the trend in the official standards has been to create an increasingly strict language syntax; however, browsers still continue to render pages that are far from valid HTML.

XHTML, which applies the stricter rules of XML to HTML to make it easier to process and maintain, is the W3C's successor to HTML. As such, many consider XHTML to be the "current version" of HTML, but it is a separate, parallel standard; the W3C continues to recommend the use of either XHTML 1.1, XHTML 1.0, or HTML 4.01 for web publishing.

The eXtensible HyperText Markup Language, or XHTML, is a markup language that has the same expressive possibilities as HTML, but a stricter syntax. Whereas HTML is an application of SGML, a very flexible markup language, XHTML is an application of XML, a more restrictive subset of SGML. Because they need to be well-formed (syntactically correct), XHTML documents allow for automated processing to be performed using a standard XML library ? unlike HTML, which requires a relatively complex, lenient, and generally custom parser (though an SGML parser library could possibly be used). XHTML can be thought of as the intersection of HTML and XML in many respects, since it is both valid HTML and XML. XHTML 1.0 became a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Recommendation on January 26, 2000.

In computing, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a stylesheet language used to describe the presentation of a document written in a markup language. Its most common application is to style web pages written in HTML and XHTML, but the language can be applied to any kind of XML document, including SVG and XUL. The CSS specifications are maintained by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

JavaScript is an object-based scripting programming language based on the concept of prototypes. The language is best known for its use in websites, but is also used to enable scripting access to objects embedded in other applications. It was originally developed by Brendan Eich of Netscape Communications Corporation under the name Mocha, then LiveScript, and finally renamed to JavaScript. Like Java, JavaScript has a C-like syntax, but it has far more in common with the Self programming language than with Java.

As of 2005, the latest version of the language is JavaScript 1.5, which corresponds to ECMA-262 Edition 3. ECMAScript, in simple terms, is a standardized version of JavaScript. Mozilla versions since 1.8 Beta 1 also have partial support of E4X, which is a language extension dealing with XML, defined in the ECMA-357 standard.

In computing, a firewall is a piece of hardware and/or software which functions in a networked environment to prevent some communications forbidden by the security policy, analogous to the function of firewalls in building construction. A firewall is also called a Border Protection Device (BPD), especially in NATO contexts, or packet filter in BSD contexts.

A firewall has the basic task of controlling traffic between different zones of trust. Typical zones of trust include the Internet (a zone with no trust) and an internal network (a zone with high trust). The ultimate goal is to provide controlled connectivity between zones of differing trust levels through the enforcement of a security policy and connectivity model based on the least privilege principle.

Proper configuration of firewalls demands skill from the administrator. It requires considerable understanding of network protocols, and of computer security. Small mistakes can render a firewall worthless as a security tool.

A screen reader is a software application that attempts to identify and interpret what is being displayed on the screen. This is then presented to a blind user as speech (by text-to-speech) or by driving a braille display. Screen readers are used by people with little or no functional vision: people with some vision often use screen magnifiers.

In early operating systems such as MS-DOS the screen display consisted of characters mapping directly to a screen buffer in memory and a cursor position. Input was by keyboard. All this information could therefore all be obtained from the system by hooking the flow of information around the system and reading the screen buffer and communicating the results to the user. This was relatively easy to engineer. Screen readers were developed for early personal computers such as the BBC Micro.

With the arrival of graphical user interfaces (GUIs) the situation became more complicated. The display now consisted of a complex pixel-based display, with characters and graphics drawn on the screen at particular positions: there is no textual representation of the screen display. Screen readers were therefore forced to employ new low-level techniques, hooking messages from the operating system to the display and using these to build up an off-screen model, a representation of the display in which the required text content is stored. For example, the operating system might send messages to draw a command button and its caption. These messages are intercepted and used to construct the off-screen model: capturing the caption message provides the text for the button, so when the user selects it the caption can be read out. Screen readers can also communicate information on menus, controls, and other visual constructs to permit blind users to interact with these constructs. However, maintaining an off-screen model is a significant technical challenge: hooking the low-level messages and maintaining an accurate model are both difficult tasks.

Operating system and application designers have attempted to address these problems by providing ways for screen readers to access the display contents without having to maintain an off-screen model. These involve the provision of alternative and accessible representations of what is being displayed on the screen accessed through an API. Examples include AT-SPI, Microsoft Active Accessibility and the Java Access Bridge. Screen readers can query the operating system or application for what is currently being displayed and receive updates when the display changes. For example, a screen reader can be told that the current focus is on a button and the button caption to be communicated to the user. This approach is considerably easier for screen readers, but fails when applications do not comply with the accessibility API: for example, Microsoft Word does not comply with the Microsoft Active Accessibility API, so screen readers must still maintain an off-screen model for Word or find another way to access its contents.

Screen readers can be assumed to be able to access all display content that is not intrinsically inaccessible. Web browsers, word processors, icons and windows and email programs are just some of the applications used successfully by screen reader users. However, using a screen reader is considerably more difficult that using a GUI and many applications have specific problems resulting from the nature of the application (e.g. animations in Macromedia Flash) or failure to comply with accessibility standards for the platform (e.g. Microsoft Word and Active Accessibility).

Many different commercial screen readers are available, with different approaches and features. For example, some screen readers can be scripted. Scripts are written for individual applications and users so the behaviour of the screen reader can be tailored to the application and user. A person's choice of screen reader is dictated by many factors, including cost - screen readers can cost many hundreds of US dollars - and the role of organisations like charities and schools. Screen reader choice is contentious and strong opinions and preferences are common.

Most screen readers are available as commercial products. Major screenreaders include:

- Jaws by Freedom Scientific

- Window-Eyes by GW Micro

- LookOUT from Choice Technology