Culture across cultures: a quality challenge

Cultural heritage raises a big challenge, as useful information can be found in many documents, linked by a variety of association mechanisms. Semantic web and universal access are two relevant issues in Web development. Adaptive and intelligent systems can help to overcome the hurdles of different cultures and traditions, as well as disabilities. Often, different cultures or traditions can share the semantics of specific information items but can conflict in their organization in the context. Therefore, user interface in cultural heritage environment must not only be compliant with accessibility and usability issues, but also have to cope with the sematic ineroperability. In this framework, XML, as the basis for the exchange of structured information, the W3C Recommendations as a frame of reference, and the Semantic Web as the next challenge, play a basic role.