Publication Policies

W4A publishes its proceedings with ACM. Hereby, by submitting your article to an ACM Publication, you are acknowledging that you and your co-authors are subject to all ACM Publications Policies, including ACM’s new Publications Policy on Research Involving Human Participants and Subjects. ACM will investigate alleged violations of this policy or any ACM Publications Policy, which may result in a full retraction of your paper, in addition to other potential penalties, as per the ACM Publications Policy.

Please ensure that you and your co-authors obtain an ORCID ID so you can complete the publishing process for an accepted paper. ACM has been involved in ORCID from the start and we have recently made a commitment to collect ORCID IDs from all of our published authors. We are committed to improving author discoverability, ensuring proper attribution and contributing to ongoing community efforts around name normalisation; your ORCID ID will help in these efforts.

Submission Policy

  • The official language of the Conference is English.
  • Two forms of reviewed submission exist: the Full Technical Paper and the Communication paper.
  • Technical papers should present significant scientific advances that are at a mature stage of development. We are looking for full papers that present relevant contributions to research, development, and practice in the area of Web Accessibility and align with any of the topics listed in the call for papers. All submissions will be peer-reviewed by an international panel. Submissions MUST contain substantial original, unpublished material. Please refer to the ACM policy on plagiarism for guidance. Technical papers will be marked as such in the proceedings.
  • Communications should present interesting recent results or novel, thought-provoking ideas that are not quite ready for a regular technical paper. We are looking for interesting and bold papers in all areas of accessibility technology and its applications that align with any of the topics listed in the call for papers. All submissions will be peer-reviewed by an international panel. Submissions MUST contain substantial original, unpublished material. Please refer to the ACM policy on plagiarism for guidance. Communications will be marked as such in the proceedings and will not be included in our technical paper statistics.
  • The only Conference chair or organiser with access to the submission system will be the Programme Chair(s) and the General Chair(s).
  • Anyone, including the full Programme Committee, any Organiser, or any Chair (including the Programme Chairs) can submit a paper.
  • The Programme Committee will review all submissions except submissions from the Programme Chairs.
  • Submissions from the Programme Chairs will be reviewed by the Steering Committee, which will provide unified anonymous feedback outside of the submissions management system.
  • All submissions will be reviewed by at least two reviewers, with three reviewers as the default.
  • Papers will not be blinded – In this way, we encourage a degree of self-policing: submissions are not blinded; therefore, submitting immature work to be read by a programme committee populated by the field’s top researchers will tarnish your reputation.
  • Very high technical quality, or thought-provoking work in the case of a communication, is the only selection criterion.
  • The Programme Chairs will make the final decision based on all information available and will then take the necessary steps to inform each corresponding author of the outcome.

Publication Policy

  • All accepted submissions will be published in an abstract form in the paper-based conference proceedings and in full in the selected digital library.
  • Keynote papers can appear in the Conference proceedings and will be between 4 pages and 10 pages long, but will not be only an abstract except in extenuating circumstances as decided by the General Chair.
  • Accepted papers and communications will appear in the Conference proceedings.
  • Technical papers will be marked as such in the proceedings.
  • Communications will be marked as such in the proceedings and will not be included in our technical paper statistics.

Awards Policy

  • The W4A bestow the following four awards at each conference edition:
    • The W4A Vicki L. Hanson Best Technical Paper Award;
    • The W4A Best Communication Paper;
    • Web Accessibility Challenge: Judges Award (Chosen before the conference by the Challenge Judges); and
    • Web Accessibility Challenge: Delegates Award (Chosen at the conference by the Delegates).
  • Any submission (within the correct category of submission) can win a W4A Award, except for:
    • The General Chair(s): May not win any conference award;
    • The Programme Chair(s): May not win any conference award relating to the Technical or Communications programme; and
    • The Challenge Chair(s): May not win any conference award related to the Web Accessibility Challenge.