Accessibility of Internet Portals in Ambient Intelligent Scenarios: Re-thinking Their Design and Implementation

Internet portals are gateways to the World Wide Web, which offer an amalgamation of services, like search engines, online shopping information, email, news, weather reports, stock quotes, community forums, maps, travel information, etc. Furthermore, with the arrival of the Mobile Web, they are also frequently used in Ambient Intelligence scenarios. This paper will discuss basic design considerations inspired by systems theory fundamental principles, where the portal as a whole and its components (known as portlets) are analyzed. This analysis also includes a set of user requirements for people with special needs gathered in previous user studies from the authors.