W4A 2010

Wednesday, 27 January 2010

Final Call for Papers

This is the final call for technical and communications papers for the next W4A Conference: 'Developing Regions: Common Goals, Common Problems?'. Papers are due on Monday, February 1, at midnight Hawaii Standard Time. The deadline for the Web Accessibility Challenge is also rapidly approaching. If you are planning to submit to this conference, now is the time.

Labels: #w4a, #w4a10, call

Monday, 30 November 2009

Call for Papers

The Seventh International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web

Accessibility (W4A 2010)

'Developing Regions: Common Goals, Common Problems?'

Co-Located with the Nineteenth International World Wide Web Conference

(WWW2010), in Raleigh, North Carolina, USA, 26-27 April 2010.

Important Dates

-------------------

* SUBMISSIONS:

TECHNICAL and COMMUNICATION Papers:

01 Feb 2010 (Midnight Hawaii Standard Time)

WEB ACCESSIBILITY CHALLENGE:

19th Feb 2010 (Midnight Hawaii Standard Time)

More details:

Keynote Speakers

--------------------------

* Steve Bratt (CEO, WWW Foundation)

* Gregg Vanderheiden (Director Trace R&D Center, Professor, University

of Wisconsin-Madison)

This year, we will also have an After Dinner Keynote at the conference dinner. We feel that this more casual environment will allow for an extended discussion among the conference attendees of the topics covered throughout the conference. Our 2010 After Dinner Keynote will be:

* William Loughborough (Smith-Kettlewell Institute of Visual Science)

Publications

-------------------

* The conference proceedings will be published as part of the ACM

International Conference Proceedings Series and will be available at

the ACM Digital Library.

* Authors of selected papers presented at W4A 2010 will be invited to submit revised versions of their papers for publication in a Special Issue of the New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia (NRHM) journal. This follows two previous successful Special Issues of the same journal presenting research from past W4A conferences, and we're pleased to be able to continue our association with the journal.

New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia:

Topics and Content

-------------------

A revolution in the information society is now starting, based on the

use of mobile phones in developing countries. The hyper-growth of

mobile phone penetration is deeply changing the lives of people in

most of the world; their ways of communicating, working, learning, and

structuring their societies. The promising next step is obviously to

access the Web. The Web has already touched the lives of over a

billion people and now is the time for the next billions.

However, this expansion faces unprecedented accessibility

challenges. Even the word "accessibility" needs a new definition for

people in the developing regions. How can someone who is illiterate or

barely literate access the Web? In some cases, a language may not even

have a written form. The affordability of the technology is also a

challenge, while access is constrained by low computational power,

limited bandwidth, compact keyboards, tiny screens, and even by the

lack of electric power. All of these constraints compound the problems

of access and inclusion.

The desire for access in developing regions and the resourcefulness of

the people who want inclusion unite the communities of people in

developing regions and the communities of disabled people in the

developed world. Will complex and highly graphical interfaces exclude

developing regions from access? What problems exist, what are the

newly appearing problems, and what solutions are required? How do the

adoption patterns for Web accessibility and inclusion vary across

cultures? What effect will the Web in the developing regions have on

accessibility in the developed regions and vice versa?

Note that while the commonalities between Web Accessibility and

Developing Regions are this years theme, please don't be deterred if

this somewhat unique area is not yours. We would like to see all

quality work on Web Accessibility regardless of the particular field

within accessibility. The overriding reason for a paper being accepted

is its high quality in relation to the broad area of Web

Accessibility.

In this case topics of interests include (but are not limited to):

* Inclusion and Citizen Empowerment in Developing Regions;

* Inclusion and Literacy in Developing Regions;

* Enhancing Education in Developing Regions;

* Accessibility Problems in Developing Regions;

* Web Based Employment in Developing Regions;

* Web Based Health Care in Developing Regions;

* Evaluation and Validation tools and techniques;

* User Experimentation looking at Social Networking and Freedom of Expression;

* User Agents for Developing Regions and User Agent Guidelines;

* Web Authoring Guidelines;

* Design and best practice to support Web accessibility;

* Technological advances to support Web accessibility;

* End user tools;

* Accessibility guidelines, best practice, evaluation techniques, and tools;

* Psychology of end user experiences and scenarios;

* Innovative techniques to support accessibility;

* Universally accessible graphical design approaches;

* Design Perspectives;

* Adapting existing Web content; and

* Accessible graphic formats and tools for their creation.

Submission

--------------------

We will accept position and technical papers, and short

communications. Position papers should only be submitted as a

communication of (up to 4-pages) whereas technical papers should be in

full paper format (up to 10-pages). Accepted papers and communications

will appear in the Conference proceedings contained on the Conference

CD, and will also be accessible to the general public via the ACM

Digital Library website. The official language of the Conference is

English.

Submission details are available at:

Web Accessibility Challenge

-------------------

Sponsored by Microsoft since 2008, the "Web Accessibility Challenge"

is organised to give an opportunity to researchers and developers of

advanced Web accessibility technologies for showcasing their

technologies to technical leaders in this area not only from academia

and industry but also from end-users. More details:

ttp://www.w4a.info/2010/submissions/challenge.shtml

Endorsement

-------------------

W4A 2010 is endorsed by the International World Wide Web Conferences

Steering Committee (IW3C2)

General Chair

-------------------

Chieko Asakawa and Hironobu Takagi

Accessibility Research, Tokyo Research Laboratory, IBM Research, Tokyo

Japan

Email: gc-2010-at-w4a.info

Programme Chairs

-------------------

Leo Ferres

Department of Computer Science, Universidad de Concepci√≥n,

Chile

Cynthia Shelly

Microsoft Co.

USA

Email: pc-2010@w4a.info

Challenge Chairs

-------------------

Julio Abascal, Myriam Arrue and Markel Vigo

UPV/EHU,

Spain

Special Issue Chair

-------------------

David Sloan

University of Dundee, UK.

Programme Committee

-------------------

Margherita Antona, ICS-FORTH, Greece

Helen Ashman, The University of South Australia, Australia

Armando Barreto, Florida International University, USA

Eugene Borodin, Stony Brook University, USA

Giorgio Brajnik, Universita di Udine, Italy

Andy Brown, University of Manchester, UK

Anna Cavender, University of Washington

Wendy Chisholm, University of Washington

Alan Chuter, ONCE Foundation

Michael Cooper, W3C, USA

Olga De Troyer, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium

David Duce, Oxford Brookes University, UK

Kelly Ford, Microsoft, Inc., USA

Renata Fortes, University of Sao Paulo, Brasil

Becky Gibson, IBM Emerging Internet Technologies, USA

Vicki Hanson, University of Dundee, UK

Simon Harper, University of Manchester, UK

Sarah Horton, Dartmouth College, USA

Caroline Jay, University of Manchester, UK

Brian Kelly, UKOLN, University of Bath, UK

Rui Lopes, University of Lisbon, Portugal

Darren Lunn, University of Manchester, UK

Charles McCathieNevile, Opera Software

Eleni Michailidou, University of Manchester, UK

Klaus Miesenberger, University of Linz, Austria

David Novick, The University of Texas at El Paso, USA

Zeljko Obrenovic, Technical University Eindhoven (TU/e), Netherland

Michael Paciello, The Paciello Group, USA

Enrico Pontelli, New Mexico State University, USA

I.V. Ramakrishnan, State University of New York at Stony Brook, USA

Gustavo Rossi, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina

Paola Salomoni, University of Bologna, Italy

Andrew Sears, UMBC, USA

David Sloan, University of Dundee, UK

Shari Trewin, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, USA

Victor Tsaran, Yahoo, Inc., USA

Douglas Tudhope, University of Glamorgan, UK

Takayuki Watanabe, Tokyo Woman's Christian University, Japan

Yeliz Yesilada, University of Manchester, UK

W4A on the Web

-------------------

Labels: #w4a, #w4a10, 2010, call

Wednesday, 23 September 2009

First Call for Papers

The Seventh International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web

Accessibility (W4A 2010)

'Developing Regions: Common Goals, Common Problems?'

Co-Located with the Nineteenth International World Wide Web Conference

(WWW2010), in Raleigh, North Carolina, USA, 26-27 April 2010.

Important Dates

-------------------

* SUBMISSIONS:

TECHNICAL and COMMUNICATION Papers:

01 Feb 2010 (Midnight Hawaii Standard Time)

WEB ACCESSIBILITY CHALLENGE:

19th Feb 2010 (Midnight Hawaii Standard Time)

More details: http://www.w4a.info/2010/submissions/dates.shtml