This thesis investigates two different approaches to improving access to the Web for visually impaired people: the design of Web content; and the presentation of content. The potential for improving the design of Web content was investigated in an evaluation of the usability of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines of the Web Accessibility Initiative. Student Web page authors used the Guidelines to adapt Web pages containing various elements (such as images and tables). These pages were collated into a Web site, which was evaluated by visually impaired people. The page authors found it difficult to find the information they required in the Guidelines document, and had difficulties with implementing the advice of the guidelines. The visually impaired people who evaluated the pages found that the extent of the accessibility of the different elements varied depending on the individual’s experience of using the Web, and the software they used. The accessibility of some elements was not improved by the implementation of the guidelines. The potential for improving the presentation of Web content was investigated using a haptic device. The perception of virtual textures and objects by blind and sighted people via this device was examined. It was found that the virtual textures were perceived differently to the real textures examined in the literature, and that the blind people could better discriminate between the textures than the sighted people could. The virtual objects were explored from the inside and from the outside. It was found that objects generally felt larger from the inside than from the outside. This has been termed the ‘Tardis’ effect. The thesis concludes that it is difficult to define what we mean by ‘accessibility’. Without a clear definition it is not possible to judge whether a Web site is ‘truly’ accessible. The difficulties in making Web content fully accessible mean that additional methods are required for presenting the content in different ways. The researcher believes that haptic devices offer one such method, and could be particularly useful in presenting information that is visual in nature, such as information laid out in columns.

Dynamic, refreshable tactile displays offer a method of displaying graphical information to people who are blind or visually impaired. Texture, which is already used as an effective method to present graphical information in physical tactile diagrams, conceivably constitutes the best way to present graphics through a tactile display. This thesis presents the design of a new low-cost haptic matrix display device capable of displaying graphical information through virtual textures. The perception of virtual textures through the display is examined through three main experiments. The first two experiments examine the perception of square wave gratings through the device. The final experiment examines the effect of texture adaptation when using the device, and compares it to exploration with a handheld probe and the bare finger. The results show that haptic matrix displays can be used to display graphical information through texture and offer guidelines in the production of such textures.

The rising cost in video game content creation, both in terms of man hours and in terms of monetary dollars, restricts the ability of video game developers to create unique, entertaining content. Motivated by how this cost is a direct result of "next-generation graphics", I am motivated to ask: what would a next-generation content creation tool look like? I investigate the problem by constructing several such tools. In particular, I construct a mesh quilting algorithm for random level generation, a rapid level construction toolkit based on the concept of an architectural blueprint but supporting features such as complex silhouette geometry and roof geometry, and a tool for rapidly painting world textures. I also introduce a new system for accessing barycentric coordinate data from within the fragment shader, which can be used in support of real-time 3D image quilting, more accurate normal interpolation, and texture rendering from within the world painting tool. Some history of video game content creation is discussed, and a roadmap is charted for future development. / Graduate

Work discusses rendering of complex scenes and terrain. It's main task is to show the extensive scenery terrain that normally do not fit in the graphic card memory. It introduce the theory of terrain rendering including terrain level of detail algoritms. The paper presents the design and implementation of application that implements dynamic streaming of complex terrain.