The "Web Accessibility Challenge" is organised, and since 2008 sponsored by Microsoft, 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. We would like to encourage and accelerate development of innovative and practically usable Web accessibility technologies. This year, we would like to focus on the technologies for "one world, one Web".

According to the recent globalization trend, the Web is becoming the social infrastructure for the global community. Web 2.0 technologies, such as social networking services, collective intelligence services, and real-time collaboration services, realized various types of global collaboration models, and they are changing the world drastically. This trend requires the web accessibility technology to be evolved to allow anyone to join the global community by making Web 2.0 collaboration services accessible.

This year, the second "Web accessibility challenge" aims to gather innovative accessibility technologies for rich Internet applications, collaboration services, collective intelligence systems, real-time collaboration systems, location aware systems, multilingual web sites, local language input methods and other systems invented for globalization.

We are entering a new era of accessibility, a literal third wave. Third wave
accessibility is a model set of standard accessibility features, interfaces,
services, and data stored in accessible format. Third wave accessibility
embraces themes including usability, interoperability, and standards
harmonisation.

The question is: Does the emergence of Web 2.0 and it's ecosystem of dynamic,
open source, semantic-driven social networks fly in direct opposition to third
wave accessibility?

This presentation focuses on the accessibility challenges Web 2.0 presents to
users with disabilities. We will examine the complexities intrinsic to Web 2.0
and determine what it will take to achieve synthesis with third wave accessibility.

The conference fee includes the W4A conference pack and proceedings, ALL 4 WWW2008 coffee breaks, 2 WWW2008 lunches, and the W4A Conference Meal. You can now register through the WWW2008 registration System by selecting 'Online Registration'. Just fill in the Personal Information, add on any WWW2008 passports you'd like, then scroll down to 'Additional Items' (near the bottom of the page) and add on the W4A Conference required.

• Early Bird Fees (Before 18th Feb, 2008)
  

  • Full Fees - 330 US Dollars

  • Student Fees - 230 US Dollars

• Late Fees (After 18th Feb, 2008)
  

  • Full Fees - 400 US Dollars

  • Student Fees - 300 US Dollars

You can now register through the WWW2008 registration System by selecting 'Online Registration'. Just fill in the Personal Information, add on any WWW2008 passports you'd like, then scroll down to 'Additional Items' (near the bottom of the page) and add on the W4A Conference required.

'One World, One Web: Surfers become Designers?'

Co-Located with the Seventeenth International World Wide Web Conference (WWW2008), in Beijing, China, 21-22 April 2008.

http://www.w4a.info
http://www.w4a.info/updates.xml (RSS/ATOM News Feed)

Keynote Speakers
--------------------------
* Michael Paciello (The Paciello Group)
* TV Raman (Google)

Important Dates
-------------------
* SUBMISSIONS: TECHNICAL and COMMUNICATION Papers:
Monday 18th Feb 2008 (Midnight Hawaii Standard Time)
* NOTIFICATION: TECHNICAL and COMMUNICATION Papers:
Monday 10th March 2008 (Midnight Hawaii Standard Time)
* CAMERA READY COPY: TECHNICAL and COMMUNICATION Papers:
Monday 24th March 2008 (Midnight Hawaii Standard Time)
* Conference Dates:
Monday 21th and Tuesday 22nd April 2008

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 the best papers will be invited to submit extended versions to a special issue of New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia (NRHM).

Topics and Content
-------------------
The World Wide Web (Web) is returning to its origins. Surfers are not just passive readers but content creators. Wikis allow open editing and access, blogs enable personal expression, Flicker, YouTube, MySpace, and Facebook encourage social networking by enabling designs to be 'created' and 'wrapped' around content. Indeed it seems that only the Web infrastructure supporting expression is immutable and invisible to the user. Template based tools such as iWeb, Google Page Creator, and RapidWeaver enable fast professional looking Web site creation using automated placement, with templates for blogging, picture sharing, and social networking, these tools often require publishing to a system specific server, such as '.mac'. In this case we wonder if the conjugation of authoring tools and user agents represents an opportunity for automatically generated Web Accessibility or yet another problem for Web Accessibility? Will form based and highly graphical interfaces excluded disabled users from creation, expression and social networking? What problems exist, what are the upcoming problems, what solutions are required? What about the accessibility of the content designed and created by surfers? Finally, what effect will this have on the wider Web? We pose the question: What happens when surfers become authors and designers?

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

* Investigations focused on Template Based Technology;
* User Experimentation looking at Social Networking and Freedom of Expression;
* GUI and Form investigations with regard to access;
* How Wikis and Blogging Tools effect accessibility of content creation;
* Evaluation and Validation tools and techniques for Wiki and Blogging tools;
* Web Content Creation Tools;
* 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.

The Web Accessibility Challenge
--------------------------------
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. This year, we would like to focus on the technologies for "one world, one Web".
The W4A 2008 "Web accessibility challenge" aims to gather innovative accessibility technologies for rich Internet applications, collaboration services, collective intelligence systems, real-time collaboration systems, location aware systems, multilingual web sites, local language input methods and other systems invented for globalization.

For further information on submissions, participation and awards, please refer to:
http://www.w4a.info/2008/challenge.shtml

Submission
--------------------
We will accept position and technical papers, and short communications. Position papers should only be submitted as a communication of (upto 4-pages) whereas technical papers should be in full paper format (upto 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.

LaTeX:
http://www.w4a.info/2008/backingfiles/sig-alternate.cls
http://www.w4a.info/2008/backingfiles/sig-alternate.tex
http://www.w4a.info/2008/backingfiles/sig-alternate.pdf

Notes for LaTeX users:
Ensure your submission is formatted for Letter paper.
All authors should be listed on the front page.

Microsoft Word:
http://www.w4a.info/2008/backingfiles/pubform.doc

More information on the style files and submission procedure can be found at: http://www.w4a.info/2008/submission.shtml.

Please submit documents via the conference website (http://www.w4a.info/).

Sponsors
-------------------
The Mozilla Foundation (http://www.mozillafoundation.org/)
Google (http://www.google.com)
ACM's Special Interest Group on Accessible Computing (SIGACCESS) (http://www.acm.org/sigaccess/)
Zakon Group (http://www.zakongroup.com/)

Endorsement
-------------------
W4A 2008 is endorsed by the International World Wide Web Conferences Steering Committee (IW3C2)

Programme Committee
-------------------
Julio Abascal - University of the Basque Country, Spain.
Margherita Antona - ICS-FORTH, Greece.
Chieko Asakawa - IBM, Japan.
Helen Ashman - The University of South Australia, Australia.
Armando Barreto - Florida International University, USA.
Giorgio Brajnik - Universit‡ di Udine, Italy.
Catherine Brys - University of Strathclyde, UK.
Sofia Celic - Vision Australia, Australia.
Michael Cooper - W3C, USA.
David Duce - Oxford Brookes University, UK.
Becky Gibson - IBM Emerging Internet Technologies, USA.
Brian Kelly - UKOLN, UK.
Richard E. Ladner - University of Washington, USA.
Laura Leventhal - Bowling Green State University, USA.
Christina Li - BBC/UIGarden.net, UK.
Zhengjie Liu - Dalian Maritime University, China.
Klaus Miesenberger - University of Linz, Austria.
David G. Novick - The University of Texas at El Paso, USA.
Zeljko Obrenovic - CWI, Netherlands
Helen Petrie - University of York, UK.
Enrico Pontelli - New Mexico State University, USA.
IV Ramakrishnan - State University of New York at Stony Brook, USA.
Gustavo H. Rossi - Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina.
Paola Salomoni - Universit‡ di Bologna, Italy.
Andrew Sears - UMBC, USA.
Cynthia Shelly - Microsoft, USA.
Robert Stevens - University of Manchester, UK.
Hironobu Takagi - IBM Research, Japan.
Shari Trewin - IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, USA.
Olga De Troyer - VUB, Belgium.
Douglas Tudhope - University of Glamorgan, Wales - UK.
Takayuki Watanabe - Tokyo Woman's Christian University, Japan.
Mary Zajicek - Oxford Brookes University, UK.

General Chair
-------------------
Yeliz Yesilada
Information Management Group,
University of Manchester,
MANCHESTER, M13 9PL, UK

Email: gc-2008-at-w4a.info

Programme Chair
-------------------
David Sloan
School of Computing
University of Dundee
DUNDEE, DD1 4HN, UK

Email: pc-2008@w4a.info

W4A on the Web
-------------------
http://www.w4a.info
http://www.w4a.info/updates.xml (RSS/ATOM News Feed)

TV Raman is an accomplished Computer Scientist with over 15 years of industry experience in advanced technology development. During this time, he has authored 3 books and filed over 25 patents; his work on auditory interfaces was profiled in the September 1996 issue of Scientific American. He has leading edge expertise in Web standards, auditory interfaces and scripting languages. He participates in numerous W3C working groups and authored Aural CSS (ACSS); in 1996 he wrote the first ACSS implementation. He have led the definition of XML specifications for the next generation WWW including XForms, XML Events, and Compound Document Formats such as X+V.

We are entering a new era of accessibility, a literal third wave. Third wave
accessibility is a model set of standard accessibility features, interfaces,
services, and data stored in accessible format. Third wave accessibility
embraces themes including usability, interoperability, and standards
harmonisation.
The question is: Does the emergence of Web 2.0 and it's ecosystem of dynamic,
open source, semantic-driven social networks fly in direct opposition to third
wave accessibility?
This presentation focuses on the accessibility challenges Web 2.0 presents to
users with disabilities. We will examine the complexities intrinsic to Web 2.0
and determine what it will take to achieve synthesis with third wave accessibility.
See Mike's Bio

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. We would like to encourage and accelerate development of innovative and practically usable Web accessibility technologies. This year, we would like to focus on the technologies for “one world, one Web”.

According to the recent globalization trend, the Web is becoming the social infrastructure for the global community. Web 2.0 technologies, such as social networking services, collective intelligence services, and real-time collaboration services, realized various types of global collaboration models, and they are changing the world drastically. This trend requires the web accessibility technology to be evolved to allow anyone to join the global community by making Web 2.0 collaboration services accessible.

This year, the second "Web accessibility challenge" aims to gather innovative accessibility technologies for rich Internet applications, collaboration services, collective intelligence systems, real-time collaboration systems, location aware systems, multilingual web sites, local language input methods and other systems invented for globalization.

In 2006, Mike was appointed co-chair to the United States Federal Access Board's Telecommunications and Electronic and Information Technology Advisory Committee (TEITAC).

In 1997, Mr. Paciello received recognition from President William Clinton for his work in the creation of World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). Mike is author of the first book on web accessibility and usability, 'Web Accessibility for People with Disabilities' and is chiefly responsible for founding the International Committee for Accessible Document Design (ICADD) and W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).

Takayuki Watanabe, for - Experimental Evaluation of Usability and Accessibility of Heading Elements

Leo Ferres, Petro Verkhogliad, and Louis Boucher, for - (Natural language) interaction with graphical representations of statistical data

Yevgen Borodin, Jalal Mahmud, I. V. Ramakrishnan, and Amanda Stent, for - The HearSay non-visual web browser

• Read the W4A 2007 Proceedings Online at the ACM DL
• Read a selection of the W4A 2007 Slides (on Slideshare)

The check-in desk will be outside the New Brunswick room on Mezzanine 2 in the conference hotel (HM2). The registration desk will open at 7:30am on Monday May 7. Sessions take place in the New Brunswick room on Monday and Tuesday. You should register at the WWW registration desks and then proceed to the W4A Conference Room. Our first keynote will be starting at 09:00 on the Monday. The W4A banquet takes place on Monday May 7 (6:00pm to 8:00pm). This event will be held off-site at the Grizzly House restaurant in downtown Banff.

The conference fee includes the W4A conference pack and proceedings, ALL 4 WWW2007 coffee breaks, 2 WWW2007 lunches, and the Monday night W4A Conference Meal, and finally a free ACM SIGACCESS membership. You can now register through the WWW2007 registration System. Just fill in the Personal Information, add on any WWW2007 passports you'd like, then scroll down to 'Additional a la carte Items' and add on the W4A passport required.

• Early Bird Fees (Before 10th April 2007)
  
  
  • Full Fees - 350 Canadian Dollars
    (Approx: 305 USD / 160 GBP / 240 Euros - as of Nov 2006)
    
    
  • Student Fees - 250 Canadian Dollars
    (Approx: 220 USD / 115 GBP / 170 Euros - as of Nov 2006)
    
    
• Late Fees (After 11th April 2007)
  
  
  • Full Fees - 400 Canadian Dollars
    (Approx: 350 USD / 180 GBP / 270 Euros - as of Nov 2006)
    
    
  • Student Fees - 300 Canadian Dollars
    (Approx: 260 USD / 204 GBP / 140 Euros - as of Nov 2006)
    
    

You can now register through the WWW2007 registration System. Just fill in the Personal Information, add on any WWW2007 passports you'd like, then scroll down to 'Additional a la carte Items' and add on the W4A passport required.

ACM's Special Interest Group on Accessible Computing, SIGACCESS, promotes the interests of professionals working on research and development of computing and information technology to help persons with disabilities. The SIG membership (from both academia and industry) focuses on the application of technologies to serve the needs of persons with vision, motor, hearing, and speech impairments; cognitive limitations, including learning disabilities; and issues of ageing. Topics on advanced technologies, assistive technologies, and design form the core of the research topics. The SIG also strives to educate the public to support careers for disabled persons.

Founded in 1947, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a major force in advancing the skills of information technology professionals and students worldwide. Today, their 75,000 members and the public turn to the ACM for the industry's leading Portal to Computing Literature, authoritative publications and pioneering conferences, providing leadership for the 21st century.

The World Wide Web (Web) is in transition; a fundamental evolution of the model which underpins the traditional Web. This new Web, Web (2.0), is a mesh of enhanced semantics, push application widgets, and embedded scripting languages and was developed to pursue the promise of enhanced interactivity. The possible benefits of the Web 2.0 is great but it seems that without timely and prompt action disabled users will be barred from these benefits. Indeed, using sites which such as: Flicker, YouTube, MySpace, Google Maps, and Google Portal will rapidly become `off-limits' to disabled users. Semantic Web technologies have already shown themselves to be useful in addressing some issues of Web Accessibility. However, this new technology has not yet started to make its way into mainstream applications. Without change, will the benefits of the Semantic Web be lost? Will the promising enhanced interactivity of Web 2.0 technologies become increasingly inaccessible to disabled users? We pose the question:

Zakon Group is a technology consultancy and solutions provider that brings together the right mix of technology, experience, knowledge, and innovation for clients ranging from small businesses to multinational organizations. Our projects are quite diverse and include: Design and integration of the highest WiFi network in the eastern United States; Rent-a-CTO management services to non-profit organizations; Hosting and management of 10M+ hits/month Web sites; Development of the OpenConf conference management system in use by conferences worldwide. We pride ourselves in delivering services and solutions that are not only customer-centric, on-time, reliable, creative, and effective, but also accessible.

The IBM Human Ability and Accessibility Center (HA&AC) is a worldwide research organization dedicated to improving technology access and usability for all people, particularly the aging and people with disabilities. With locations in the United States, Europe, Japan, Australia, China, and Brazil, the HA&AC works to help IBM and its clients remove technology barriers by facilitating and supporting IBM product compliance, innovation, and solution integration, as well as internal and external accessibility education.

The HA&AC has made significant strides in the area of accessibility both in and outside of IBM. Our technology assets and consultation services have been a competitive differentiator for internal industry sales teams and a host of external clients, including California State University, Long Beach, Italian Senate, Deustche Bahn, and Mitsukoshi department stores. The HA&AC has also been instrumental in working with standards organizations to facilitate the creation and adoption of key worldwide standards and guidelines.

• Michael Cooper (W3C);
• Becky Gibson (IBM);
• Ian Horrocks (University of Manchester, UK);
• Mary Zajicek (Oxford Brookes University, UK).

• TECHNICAL Submissions:
            Monday 19th Feb 2007
• TECHNICAL Paper Notification:
            Friday 16th March 2007
  
  
• COMMUNICATION Submissions:
            Monday 26th March 2007
• COMMUNICATION Paper Notification:
            Friday 06th April 2007
  
  
• ALL Camera ready Due:
            Monday 16th April 2007
• Conference Dates:
            Monday 07th and Tuesday 08th May 2007