Responsibility

The Challenger Chair is responsible for controlling the operations and the organization of the Accessibility Challenge at a specific edition of the W4A conference.

As Challenge Chair (CC) you have a number of responsibilities which ensure the smooth running of the W4A Challenge (and you may choose to add some more if you think the conference will be served better by their addition). In general you should address the following responsibilities and work to the timeline (below) to make sure all of the logistical and domestic activities related to the Challenge (not covered by operations) get done.

The CC should invite the people who will act as Judges for the Accessibility Challenge, i.e. those who will ultimately award what is called the "Judges' Award" (see instructions for the "Delegates' Award" below). Normally, these are four or five people coming from different backgrounds such as academia, industry and government, all relating to accessibility. Having at least one member from each background is the ideal, though not always possible. Likewise, all judges coming from just one background is a scenario to be avoided.

The CC should prepare and send welcome and thank-you notes for the accepting Judges and send this for distribution to operations. We have a set of template letters to this effect that are available at in the operational Area of this site.

The CC should prepare and distribute the call for contributions to the Challenge track. Operations usually has several email distribution lists to which the call is sent. The Challenge call for contributions is done both inside the general call for papers, and on its own. The template email for the call is available at in the operational Area of this site. The deadline for Challenge contributions is usually two or three weeks after the technical submission papers date.

The Accessibility Challenge submission is done outside of the regular OpenConf system. The CC will collect the submissions, send acknowledgements to the authors as to the receipt (and acceptance) of their manuscripts and finally construct a booklet to be sent to the Judges. Since it is customary to ask for a demo video of the tool being submitted to the Challenge, the booklet should contain a cover page for each paper stating the title, authors, emails and link to the video demo. A general cover page with the logo of the conference, the name, address and email of the CCs should also be appended. This greatly facilitates the Judges' process, since they only have to download one document instead of several.

The Judges will be asked to provide a first and second place for the submissions. This could help with a possible tie in the first place, which is common given the small number of votes. The Judges will communicate their results to the CC and the latter will pass on the information to operations at least three weeks prior to the main conference. This will ensure there is enough time to order the prizes, to print the certificates, etc.

The CC will chair the Challenge Session, normally on the second day of the conference. During this time, the CC will provide the session times for each of the accepted contributions, and will control the timely delivery of the talks and will moderate discussion and the question period. Challenge presenters usually have 15 minutes of presentation plus 5 minutes of questions/discussion.

Once all talks have finished, the CC will call on the audience to cast ballots as to their favourite presentation. The ballots will be tallied and the CC will communicate the results to operations. The Delegates Award will be awarded to the winner. There is a balance between the 'surprise' element of giving challenge awards, and making sure that the recipients will be there. The GC should decide whether to tell prize-winners in advance so that they are present at the ceremony.

The CC will be responsible of handing out the prizes to the challenge winners at the the closing ceremony.

The W4A conference is gratis; however flights and accommodation (and other expenses) are not paid.

The W4A is vital, active, and of high quality only through your volunteerism and participation. Thank you again for your help.

Timeline 2011

All dates are the target FINISH dates.

• 31-Jul-2010 GC/PC/CC - Create Call Email Text (Send to Operations)
• 30-Sep-2010 CC - Invite and Fix Challenge Judges (inform Operations for Website)
• 31-Nov-2010 GC/PC/CC - Create Second (Updated) General Call (Send to Operations)
• 19-Jan-2011 CC - Send Challenge Submissions to Judges
• 08-Feb-2011 CC - All Challenge Submissions - Decision
• 01-Feb-2011 CC - Decide on Challenge Judges Awards (Forward Details to Operations)
• 18-Feb-2011 GC/PC/CC - Create Programme Including Proceedings Introduction
• 30-Mar-2011 CC - Email Judges Thanks
• 30-Jun-2011 GC/PC/CC - Prepare ACM Final Conference Report