W4A 2006 - First Call for Papers

*FIRST CALL FOR PAPERS*

The Third International Cross-Disciplinary Workshop on Web  
Accessibility (W4A 2006)

'Building the Mobile Web: Rediscovering Accessibility?'

Located at the Fifteenth International World Wide Web Conference (WWW  
2006)
May 22, 2006, in Edinburgh, Scotland, UK.

http://www.w4a.info

Keynotes
-----------------------
* Sarah Horton is an instructional technology specialist at Dartmouth  
College and is the author of 'Access by design: A guide to universal  
usability for Web designers'.
* Aaron Leventhal is an IBM Web accessibility architect and is the  
leader of the Mozilla Accessibility Project.
* Dr. Rhys Lewis is Chief Scientist for Volantis Systems Ltd. and is  
the chair of the Device Independence Working Group (DIWG) of the  
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
* Donna Smillie is a senior Web accessibility consultant at the Royal  
National Institute of the Blind (RNIB), UK.

Publications
-----------------------
* The workshop proceedings will be published as part of the ACM  
International Conference Proceedings Series and will be available at  
the ACM Digital Library.
* Selected papers will be invited to submit a revised version for  
consideration for a special issue of the Springer Journal - Universal  
Access in the Information Society (UAIS). These papers will go  
through an additional reviewing process to ensure quality.

Topics and Content
---------------------
We invite submissions for W4A 2004 addressing our current theme of  
'Building the Mobile Web: Rediscovering Accessibility?'.

After the launch of the Mobile Web Initiative at the World Wide Web  
Conference 2005 we are beginning to realise that, today, mobile Web  
access suffers from interoperability and usability problems that make  
the Web difficult to use. With the move to small screen size, low  
bandwidth, and different operating modalities, technology is in  
effect simulating the sensory and cognitive impairments experienced  
by disabled users within the wider population of mobile device users.  
In this our 3rd Workshop we ask the question:

     'Is engineering, designing, and building for the mobile Web just  
a rehash of the same old Web accessibility problems?'

We wish to bring together different communities working on similar  
problems to share ideas, discuss overlaps, and make the fledging  
mobile Web community aware of accessibility work that may have been  
overlooked. We ask is designing for accessibility and small screened  
devices really the same thing requiring the same solutions and can we  
work together to solve these problems? What can the Mobile Web learn  
from the Accessible Web and what resources created to support the  
Accessible Web can be used by designers in their support of the  
Mobile Web.

Topics of interests include (but are not limited to):
* Advances in Mobile Web technologies;
* Design and best practice to support the Mobile Web and accessibility:
* Technological advances to support web accessibility;
* End user tools;
* Accessibility and Mobile Web 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;
* Accessible graphic formats and tools for their creation.

Submission and Important Dates
-------------------------------
We will accept both position and technical papers. Position papers  
should only be in short paper format whereas technical papers can be  
in short or long paper format. In addition to the technical session,  
this year we are introducing a NEW best practice session (see details  
below). The following style files must be used for submissions:

LaTeX:
http://www.w4a.info/2006/backingfiles/sig-alternate.cls
http://www.w4a.info/2006/backingfiles/sig-alternate.tex
http://www.w4a.info/2006/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/2006/backingfiles/pubform.doc

More information on the style files and submission procedure can be  
found at: http://www.w4a.info/2006/submission.shtml.

We encourage authors to submit concise technical papers between 8 and  
12 pages. Short papers and position papers should not exceed 4 pages.  
Please submit documents via the workshop website (http://www.w4a.info/).

*Submissions due: Monday 20th March 2006
*Notification for acceptance: Monday 17th April 2006
*Camera ready due: Monday 24th April 2006
*Workshop date: 22nd May 2006

Best Practice Session
--------------------------------------
This year we also invite best practice papers that explain  
experiences of designing accessible pages or making existing pages  
accessible. These papers aim to bridge the gap between research on  
Web accessibility and best practice. Submissions for this session  
need to be 2-4 pages long. If you are planning to submit papers for  
this session, please inform the workshop chairs (chairs@w4a.info) in  
advance.

More information on the submission procedure can be found at: http:// 
www.w4a.info/2006/bestpractice.shtml.

Contact
-------------------------------
Simon Harper, Yeliz Yesilada, and Carole Goble
Information Management Group,
University of Manchester,
MANCHESTER, M13 9PL, UK

Email
-------------------------------
chairs@w4a.info

Received on Friday, 23 December 2005 11:19:32 UTC