Note also there has been some interesting prototyping of text-free  
interfaces by Indrani Mehdi  at Microsoft India:

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/india/groups/tem/presentations/text-freeui.ppt
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/groups/tem/default.aspx

S


On 19 Jan 2009, at 16:01, Sharon Perry wrote:

> Hello Everyone
>
> Following on from my post last week about Jonathan Chetwynd's paper
> on "Communication with symbols: from the web to the internet and  
> beyond",
> you might also be interested to know that he has just launched an  
> Icon Chat
> and Search Engine site at http://www.openicon.org/.
>
> The site includes links to three short YouTube videos describing:
> * how to chat and search with icons using the application. It shows  
> how chat
> can take place using symbols, such as using a “heart” for love;
> * how to create a web page with a live icon - i.e. a graphic feed  
> which
> updates, for example a weather symbol which updates as the weather is
> updated for that location;
> * a look at a feed which uses icons, i.e. Zanadu (SVG enabled, so  
> may not
> work on Internet Explorer), which has live image feeds of pet images  
> from
> Flickr, the latest news, the latest weather, a direct link to play  
> Radio 4, etc.
>
> The aim is to present information in the form of images or symbols,  
> which are
> drawn in from feeds. This is similar to a widget based approach, but  
> the
> concept behind this site allows people with low literacy levels to  
> use the
> internet without having to navigate complex external sites.
>
> Best Regards
>
> Sharon
> Sharon Perry,
> Learning Technology Advisor,
> JISC CETIS,
> University of Bolton.
> Website: http://jisc.cetis.ac.uk/domain/accessibility