2007 PhD Thesis Final Revised.pdf - Curtin University

interface in their next OS release. Variants of UNIX-based operating systems, such
as Linux, also have limited but growing accessibility support. A comprehensive
analysis of the accessibility tools contained within current operating systems can be
found in section 6.5.1.
2.5 The hope of the Internet
Arguably, the most important IT development in recent history has been the creation
of the Internet, which allows computer users rapid access to communication and
information throughout the world. The Internet, often seen as one of the most
successful examples of sustained investment into research (Johnston, 2004), was first
described in 1962 by J.C.R. Licklider (Leiner et al., 2002). The US government’s
Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) was interested in the system for
defence purposes and chose Licklider to implement a packet-switching network
system (Johnston, 2004). The development of the ARPAnet project, as it became
known, changed the computer from a solely mathematical tool to one that also
enabled communication (Johnston, 2004). The initial ARPAnet gradually grew into
the networking concepts that are understood today as the Internet, based on the idea
that multiple independent packet-switching networks can exchange data over a
variety of media (Leiner et al., 2002). The initial developments of the US military
and the US educational institutions in the 1970s continued to expand through the
1980s. In 1992, the US government allowed the Internet to become a public
resource. The move of the Internet into the public realm allowed anyone who chose
to access the network access to send and receive data (Zakon, 2002).
In Australia, the impact of the Internet followed developments in the USA.
The Internet in Australia is generally thought to have begun as a simplified network
link between the University of Melbourne and the University of Sydney in the mid
1970s, known as the Australian Computer Science network (ACSnet). In the early
1980s a permanent connection with ARPAnet was established for the purpose of e-
mail within computer science-related research areas. The establishment of the .au
top-level domain also occurred (Clarke, 2001). After considerable discussion within
government and tertiary institutions, formal international Internet Protocol (IP) links
were established in 1989. This led to the formation of the Australian Academic and
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