Re-narration Web ----------------------------
The idea of the re-narration Web is to provide a person visiting a Web page, a comfortable narrative of the page content based on the visitor profile, and contributions of alternative narratives made available by the community. Individuals contributing alternative narratives is the key aspect of re-narration Web. An individual can choose to provide an alternative narration to any specific entity, on any Web page, such as an image, a paragraph or subtitles for a segment of a video and such. These contributed narratives are blogged in contributors preferred web-site and indexed as possible alternative narratives that can be recommended for a page rendering tool, via a browser plug-in, based on visitor's reading level and language preference indications.
It is a Web framework for contributing alternative narratives [0] to Web content and to compose renditions based on the user's literacy level or reading-comfort preferences. Re-narration Web, in the long run, is about distributed social networks of interpretations of available Web-content for a people who are not comfortable with reading text, or for people in a foreign context [1].
The following are the various tools that we are developing and looking for people to help develop.
The first set of tools involves a browser extension that assists people in authoring narratives. Briefly, parts of a web page being read can be selected for alternative narration and an alternative narration is authored in the user's own space, like the user's blog.
This tool will also help in dynamically composing a rendition that is appropriate for the user profile, say for an illiterate user or an user of a foreign context such a Hindi speaking user visiting an English page. See the idea on a11y.in and alipi.janastu.org
This set of tools will mostly be requiring HTML5, Javascript skills; and will incrementally address various docTypeHTML5 elements for authoring alternative narratives.
The second set of tools will be a "directory service" of available narrations and re-narrations. These narrations can further be ranked as spam or indicating appropriateness for specific contexts such as Geo-locations, language preferences, reading levels and FOAF mentions. And a mash-up service that uses the directory service in putting together the available narratives into well formed renditions based on a Web-site's visitor-profile and preferences.
The third set of tools will be about developing add-ons that utilize social networking tools and also make the re-narration Web accessible by sites like Facebook. Some one's status written in Malayalam would be rendered in English for an person who prefers English, provided that someone else has given an English narration of the status.
The next set of tools will involve recommendation algorithms and well-formedness tests for a number of DocTypeHTML5 contexts.
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Technologies: Python for server side and HTML5/Javascript; browser extensions
Organisations: janastu.org, servelots.com and others
[0] see alipi.janastu.org ; also next para elaborates a bit more on alternative narratives and composing renditions.
[1] foreign context: a context in which the page is authored is foreign to a visitor. Say if a visitor does not understand English and the page is authored in English, or say a judgement in a court uses juristic language and a visitor will need it in simple terms.