W4A 2011 - Final Call for Papers

The 8th International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A 2011)                                    
<http://www.w4a.info>

Co-Located with the 20th International World Wide Web Conference, WWW2011        
 in Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India, 28-29 March 2011                     


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Crowdsourcing the Cloud: An Inclusive Web by All and For All?

Topics and Content
-------------------------------------
Cloud-computing is the technological paradigm where computing
resources are distributed over the Internet. This way, the browser
becomes the interface to access services and applications with almost
unlimited storage capacity and processing power. Cloud-computing and
the applications deployed over it facilitate collective intelligence
and crowdsourcing phenomena, where millions of users can contribute to
a common goal. Following these approaches, a number of successful
projects that focus on web accessibility have been released in recent
years. These developments range from platforms to collectively
removing accessibility barriers to making assistive technologies
widespread and available for all. These preliminary approaches such as
online screen-readers and accessibility repairing applications have
yielded promising results towards an inclusive web by removing both
economical and accessibility barriers. In order to develop the cloud
to its full potential as far as accessibility is concerned, there are
still several research questions that should address the weak points
and challenges in a timely manner in order to create an inclusive Web.

Will crowdsourcing the cloud lead us to an inclusive Web by all and
for all? Will crowdsourcing the cloud remove accessibility barriers
for all? Will crowdsourcing the cloud make the Web accessible or
inaccessible?

From this point of view, W4A 2011 is interested in the following
topics in particular (but not exclusively!):

* Cloud computing based assistive technologies
* Deployment, acceptance and scalability issues of cloud computing accessibility tools
* Tools for collaborative accessibility testing
* Tools to collectively repair accessibility problems
* Empirical studies and data analysis of crowdsourcing for accessibility
* Cooperative authoring tools
* Quality assurance of crowdsourcing generated content
* Methodologies for crowdsourcing procedures for accessibility
* Web authoring guidelines and tools
* Mobile accessibility
* User modeling and the adaptive web
* Adaptation and transformation of existing Web content
* 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
* Accessible graphic formats and tools for their creation

While cloud computing and crowdsourcing are this year's 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.

Microsoft 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:
<http://www.w4a.info/2011/submissions/challenge.shtml>

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:
<http://www.w4a.info/2011/submissions/index.shtml>

Important Dates
-------------------------------------
Technical and Communication Papers:
10 Jan 2011 (Midnight Hawaii Standard Time)

Web Accessibility Challenge:
31 Jan 2011 (Midnight Hawaii Standard Time)

Decision:
07 Feb 2011 (Midnight Hawaii Standard Time)

More details: <http://www.w4a.info/2011/submissions/dates.shtml>

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. Selected authors will be invited to submit
extended versions of their paper for publication in a Journal to be
announced.

Keynote Speakers
------------------------------------
Manish Gupta, Director at IBM Research (India) and Chief Technologist at IBM India (South Asia)
Bebo White, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) - "William Loughborough Dinner Keynote"

Google Student Awards
-------------------------------------
The Second "Student Awards Programme", sponsored since 2010 by Google,
is organised to give an opportunity to high quality students with
limited funding to attend the W4A Conference. Thanks to generous
sponsorship from Google, two awards, each of up to US$1200, are
available to support students to attend W4A 2011. We now invite
applications from interested students.

<http://www.w4a.info/2011/submissions/studentawards.shtml>

Endorsement
-------------------------------------
This years W4A is endorsed by the IW3C2 in cooperation with the ACM and its Special Interest Groups SIGWEB and SIGCHI. The general conference is supported by IBM Research, Microsoft, and Google, while the Web Accessibility Challenge is specifically sponsored by Microsoft, and the Student Awards are specifically sponsored by a Google.

General Chair (gc-2011-at-w4a.info)
-------------------------------------
Leo Ferres, Universidad de Concepcion, Chile

Programme Chairs (pc-2011@w4a.info)
-------------------------------------
Julio Abascal, University of the Basque Country, Spain
Markel Vigo, CICtourGUNE, Spain

Challenge Chairs (cc2011@w4a.info)
-------------------------------------
Rui Lopes, University of Lisbon, Portugal
Paola Salomoni, University of Bologna, Italy

Student Awards (students2011@w4a.info)
-------------------------------------
Jeffrey P. Bigham, University of Rochester, USA
Yevgen Borodin, Stony Brook University, USA

Programme Committee
-------------------------------------
Shadi Abou-Zahra, W3C	
Margherita Antona, ICS-FORTH
Helen Ashman, The University of South Australia
Myriam Arrue, University of the Basque Country
Melanie Baljko, York University
Armando Barreto, Florida International University
Yevgen Borodin, Stony Brook University
Giorgio Brajnik, Università di Udine
Andy Brown, University of Manchester	
Anna Cavender, University of Washington
Wendy Chisholm, University of Washington
Olga De Troyer, Vrije Universiteit Brussel
David Duce, Oxford Brookes University	
Inmaculada Fajardo, University of Valencia
Kelly Ford, Microsoft Inc.	
Renata Fortes, University of Sao Paulo
Greg Gay, University of Toronto
Becky Gibson, IBM Emerging Internet Technologies
Simon Harper, University of Manchester
Sarah Horton, Dartmouth College
Matt Huenerfauth, City University of New York
Caroline Jay, University of Manchester
Brian Kelly, UKOLN, University of Bath
Arun Kumar, IBM India
Rui Lopes, University of Lisbon
Katherine McCoy, University of Delaware
Eleni Michailidou, University of Manchester
Klaus Miesenberger, University of Linz
David Novick, The University of Texas at El Paso
Zeljko Obrenovic, Technical University Eindhoven
Mike Paciello, The Paciello Group
Oscar Pastor, Universidad Politécnica de Valencia
Enrico Pontelli, New Mexico State University
IV Ramakrishnan, Stony Brook University
Gustavo Rossi, Universidad Nacional de La Plata
Paola Salomoni, University of Bologna
Andrew Sears, UMBC	
Cynthia Shelly, Microsoft Corporation
David Sloan, University of Dundee
Hironobu Takagi, IBM Research Tokyo
Shari Trewin, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center
Douglas Tudhope, University of Glamorgan
Konstantinos Votis, Centre for Research and Technology Hellas
Annalu Waller, University of Dundee
Takayuki Watanabe, Tokyo Woman's Christian University
Yeliz Yesilada, METU NCC/University of Manchester

W4A stats
-------------------------------------
Average downloads per article at the ACM Digital Library is 434 and average citations per article 2.38. To see the stats check the ACM Digital Library site for the W4A conference at <http://portal.acm.org/event.cfm?id=RE143&CFID=112729227&CFTOKEN=66814088>

Received on Wednesday, 5 January 2011 10:52:53 UTC