June 27 - July 1, 2005 Montreal, the annual UPA conference on the topic : Bridging Cultures.

As usability professionals, we are uniquely qualified to "be the bridge" between cultures. Our skills of observation help us identify the needs of different groups. This can help us translate the needs of one group into the results created by another group. We often do this in our work by observing and understanding the needs of our user community, and then becoming the "bridge" that translates those needs into requirements that can be understood and acted upon by designers, business owners, and technical teams.

In 2005, the UPA conference has received more than 200 professionnal submissions for communications and gathered 521 usability experts.

Within these framework, mister Renato Cudicio has presented the results of his exhaustive research on 90 Web sites from 15 countries evaluating the usability level of each of them. The graph above illustrates the fact that more the countries have problems with the digital divide (bandwidth, infrastructures and technological competencies) more they seem to make mistakes in the realization of their web sites generating more difficulties to consult them.