

Cloud Computing Accessibility

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Revision as of 17:28, 20 August 2011 by Ymohamad (Talk | contribs)

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Cloud Computing is a trend in many business areas worldwide, it bears chances for enhancing accessibility to many information resources which were locked either in proprietary or inaccessible desktop applications as the access to information in the Cloud is done mostly by web interfaces. Cloud Computing bears as well risks for excluding people from access to information resources. These chances and risks need a clear strategy and awareness.


Page author(s): Yehya Mohamad


Cloud Computing, enhanced accessibility.


[Description of the research topic and challenges]


The term cloud computing is actually a general term for several technologies. These technologies are primarily made up of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Software as a Service (SaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS). The differences between these three are subtle but clear.

  1. IaaS essentially refers to the ‘hosting’ of a company’s server OS on a common platform, supplied by a third party vendor in a data centre, e.g. Windows Azure.
  2. SaaS is software that can be accessed over the web but is hosted and supplied by a third party vendor. Examples of this include Google Docs and
  3. PaaS, in its most simple sense, is a development platform where developers can create their own applications and host them online as SaaS solutions, e.g. Google App Engine.

Cloud has seen a significant uptake because of the benefits that it offers to organisations.

  1. Cloud solutions remove hardware costs, replacing them with per users cost. This is especially beneficial to smaller organisations as it allows them to access enterprise grade technologies with much lower start up costs.
  2. The cloud allows businesses to quickly respond to its needs by adding and removing licenses with minimal fuss. Furthermore, in most cases these services have been built with high availability in mind allowing organisations to mitigate business continuity risks.


  • Why is Cloud Computing important for accessibility?
  • Which accessibility problems could be solved by cloud services?
  • How can the power of cloud computing be used to solve accessibility problems?
  • Which Cloud dedictaed accessibility tools do exist? And How could they be enhanced and combinded?


  1. Lifted by the Cloud: Visions of Cloud-Enhanced Accessibility
  2. Cloud Computing And Equal Access For All
  3. an-introduction-to-cloud-computing

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