- From: Yeliz Yesilada <yesilady@cs.man.ac.uk>
- Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2007 11:14:12 +0000
- To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
The Fourth International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A 2007) 'Web 2.0 and the Semantic Web: Hindrance or Opportunity?' Co-Located with the Sixteenth International World Wide Web Conference (WWW2007), in Banff, Canada. http://www.w4a.info http://www.w4a.info/updates.xml (RSS/ATOM News Feed) Keynotes -------- * Michael Cooper (WAI - W3C) * Becky Gibson (Emerging Technologies Group - IBM, USA) * Ian Horrocks (School of Computer Science - University of Manchester, UK) * Mary Zajicek (Advanced User Interfaces Group - Oxford Brookes University, UK) Important Dates --------------- * TECHNICAL Submissions: Monday 19th Feb 2007 * TECHNICAL Paper Notification: Friday 16th March 2007 * COMMUNICATION Submissions: Monday 26th March 2007 * COMMUNICATION Paper Notification: Friday 06th April 2007 * ALL Camera ready Due: Monday 16th April 2007 * Conference Dates: Monday 07th and Tuesday 08th May 2007 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. *This year we have agreed a special issue of the Taylor and Francis Journal 'Disability and Rehabilitation: Assistive Technology'. We will invite the 6 highest rated papers selected by a Programme Committee for revision, extension to include updated results, and publication. Topics and Content ------------------ The World Wide Web (Web) is in transition; a fundamental evolution of the model which underpins the traditional Web. This new Web, Web (2.0), is a mesh of enhanced semantics, push application widgets, and embedded scripting languages and was developed to pursue the promise of enhanced interactivity. The possible benefits of the Web 2.0 is great but it seems that without timely and prompt action disabled users will be barred from these benefits. Indeed, using sites which such as: Flicker, YouTube, MySpace, Google Maps, and Google Portal will rapidly become `off-limits' to disabled users. Semantic Web technologies have already shown themselves to be useful in addressing some issues of Web Accessibility. However, this new technology has not yet started to make its way into mainstream applications. Without change, will the benefits of the Semantic Web be lost? Will the promising enhanced interactivity of Web 2.0 technologies become increasingly inaccessible to disabled users? We pose the question: 'Web 2.0 and the Semantic Web: Hindrance or Opportunity?' Topics of interests include (but are not limited to): * Advances in Web 2.0 and Semantic Web technologies; * Tools and technologies based on Web 2.0 and Semantic Web to support Web accessibility; * Tools and technologies to make Web 2.0 and Semantic Web applications and systems accessible; * 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; * Design Perspectives; * Adapting existing web content; * Accessible graphic formats and tools for their creation. The Web Accessibility Challenge -------------------------------- This year Chieko Asakawa and Hironobu Takagi from IBM Research (Japan) are organising a new event at the W4A called the Web Accessibility Challenge. They think it is the time for innovating non- visual user experience on the Web. They would like to call for new, innovative voice access interfaces for Web content. They want to gather various types of next generation voice browsers, and demonstrate the future potential in using the Web via voice and any audio media such as sound icons. Referees will score each system by novelty and achieved usability, and decide first prize to third prize among submissions. For further information, please refer to: http://www.w4a.info/2007/challenge.shtml Submission and Important Dates ------------------------------ We will accept position and technical papers, and short communications. Position papers should only be submitted as a communication of (upto 4-pages) whereas technical papers should be in full paper format (upto 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. LaTeX: http://www.w4a.info/2007/backingfiles/sig-alternate.cls http://www.w4a.info/2007/backingfiles/sig-alternate.tex http://www.w4a.info/2007/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/2007/backingfiles/pubform.doc More information on the style files and submission procedure can be found at: http://www.w4a.info/2007/submission.shtml. Please submit documents via the conference website (http:// www.w4a.info/). Sponsors ------------------- The Mozilla Foundation (http://www.mozillafoundation.org/) The IBM Human Ability and Accessibility Center (HA&AC) (http:// www.ibm.com/able) ACM's Special Interest Group on Accessible Computing (SIGACCESS) (http://www.acm.org/sigaccess/) Zakon Group (http://www.zakongroup.com/) Programme Committee ------------------- Julio Abascal, University of the Basque Country, Spain. Shadi Abou-Zahra, WAI, W3C. Margherita Antona, ICS-FORTH, Greece. Chieko Asakawa, IBM, Japan. Helen Ashman, University of Nottingham, UK. Sean Bechhofer, University of Manchester, UK. David Duce, Oxford Brookes University, UK. D. Gareth Evans, University of Manchester, UK. Vicki L. Hanson, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, USA. Sarah Horton, Dartmouth College, USA. Johnathon Lazar, Towson University, USA. Laura Leventhal, Bowling Green State University, USA. David Lowe, University of Technology Sydney, Australia. Klaus Miesenberger, University of Linz, Austria. David G. Novick, The University of Texas at El Paso, USA. Zeljko Obrenovic, CWI, Netherlands Enrico Pontelli, New Mexico State University, USA. IV Ramakrishnan, State University of New York at Stony Brook, USA. Gustavo H. Rossi, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina. Ulrike Sattler, University of Manchester, UK. Andrew Sears, UMBC, USA. David Sloan, University of Dundee, Scotland - UK. Constantine Stephanidis, FORTH ICS, Greece. Robert Stevens, University of Manchester, UK. Alistair Sutcliffe, University of Manchester, UK. Hironobu Takagi, IBM, Japan. Shari Trewin, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, USA. Olga De Troyer, VUB, Belgium. Douglas Tudhope, University of Glamorgan, Wales - UK. Takayuki Watanabe, Tokyo Woman's Christian University, Japan. Mary Zajicek, Oxford Brookes University, UK Conference Chairs ----------------- Simon Harper, Yeliz Yesilada, and Carole Goble Information Management Group, University of Manchester, MANCHESTER, M13 9PL, UK Email ----- chairs@w4a.info Site ---- http://www.w4a.info http://www.w4a.info/updates.xml (RSS/ATOM News Feed)
Received on Monday, 12 February 2007 11:14:27 UTC