A conference user interface supporting different access rights to shared hypermedia

In distributed conference systems, participants get access to the shared documents through the computer network. The authors describe requirements in distributed conferences regarding access rights to shared documents. We give four categories of hypermedia representation based on access rights and two principles of human interface design to avoid mismatch between access rights and oral communication. We have developed the Channel Checker, which supports Non-WYSIWIS user interface for hypermedia based conferences. It allows participants to confirm users' access rights information and to communicate smoothly in conferences. By using this interface, users can synchronize the audio communication channel changes with their pointer on the shared document browser. The prototype of the Channel Checker is implemented on Java and JavaScript with an HTML browser.