Registration open: Teleconference on Making Collaboration Technologies Accessible for Persons with Disabilities

Registration open for:
Teleconference on Making Collaboration Technologies
Accessible for Persons with Disabilities

April 28, 2003 - 10:00-11:30 Boston / 14:00-15:30 London / 15:00-16:30 Paris
/
23:00-00:30 Tokyo


The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) [1]
Research
and Development Interest Group (RDIG) [2] announces that registration is now
open
for the first in a series of teleconferences focusing on research issues in
the
area of accessibility and Web-related technologies.

[1] http://www.w3.org/WAI/
[2] http://www.w3.org/WAI/RD/

Introduction

The Web is bringing together individuals and enabling them to collaborate in
new
and innovative ways. Today, diverse communities of people can come together
in
virtual spaces for meetings and working sessions. This is particularly
important
as travel to face to face meetings can be difficult for financial, health or
safety reasons.

Examples of such communities include standards development, engineering,
knowledge management, software/content development, accessibility,
scientific
research, government/international rules and regulations, and education.
Diverse, international groups currently use a variety of tools, such as
instant
messaging, Internet Relay Chat (IRC), shared desktops, and teleconferencing
for
real time interaction, as well as email, mailing lists, weblogs and
proprietary
format documents for asynchronous interaction. Participants in a
collaboration
environment may not all have equal access in the process, for reasons of
disability, bandwidth, firewalls, language, etc.

This teleconference will explore accessibility issues in collaboration
technologies from the perspectives of researchers in the field. Presenters
include:

Alison Lee, IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Labs
Suhit Gupta and Gail Kaiser, Columbia University
Gottfried Zimmerman, Trace R&D Center, University of Wisconsin

Additional details and position papers are located on the teleconference
agenda
page. [3]

[3] http://www.w3.org/WAI/RD/2003/03/agenda.html

Who should participate

Researchers and practitioners active in any aspect of Collaboration
Technologies, Human Computer Interaction, Assistive Technologies, Disability
Studies, Web Accessibility, or related fields.


Goals of the Teleconference

Participants in this conference can expect to gain an improved, synergistic
understanding of research in accessible collaboration technologies for the
internet and to develop contacts with others performing such research.

The mission of the Research and Development Interest Group (RDIG) is to
increase
the number of Web-related researchers who incorporate accessibility into
their
research design, and to identify projects researching Web accessibility, and
suggest techniques that may contribute to new projects. The desired outcome
of
more research in Web accessibility and awareness of accessibility in
mainstream
Web-related research should decrease the number of potential barriers in
future
Web-related technologies.

Proceedings of the Teleconference will be published on the Web by the
Research
and Development Interest Group.


Event Information

The teleconference will take place on Monday, 28 April, 2003, at 10:00 US
Eastern Standard Time (EST), 14:00 London, 15:00 Paris, 23:00 Tokyo. To
determine the time in your location, we recommend TimeAndDate.com. [4]

[4] http://www.timeanddate.com


Duration of the teleconference will be 90 minutes. The format of the event
is a
teleconference, augmented by Web-based presentation material. Registration
[5] for
the teleconference is required, and is limited to 24 participants.
Registration
will close on 25 April, 2003.

[5] http://cgi.w3.org/Register/selectUser.pl?_w3c_meetingName=RDIG01

Questions for discussion may be submitted in advance by email to the chair
(hakkinen@dinf.ne.jp), no later than 08:00 am EST on 28 April, 2003.

Received on Monday, 21 April 2003 09:38:41 UTC