W4A 2008, Beijing, April 21-22 2008 - First Call for Papers

*FIRST CALL FOR PAPERS*

The Fifth International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A 2008)

'One World, One Web: Surfers become Designers?'

Co-Located with the Seventeenth International World Wide Web Conference (WWW2008), in Beijing, China, 21-22 April 2008.

http://www.w4a.info
http://www.w4a.info/updates.xml (RSS/ATOM News Feed)

Confirmed Keynote Speaker
-------------------------
* Michael Paciello (The Paciello Group)

Important Dates
-------------------
*  SUBMISSIONS: TECHNICAL and COMMUNICATION Papers:
   Monday 18th Feb 2008 (Midnight Hawaii Standard Time)
*  NOTIFICATION: TECHNICAL and COMMUNICATION Papers:
   Monday 10th March 2008 (Midnight Hawaii Standard Time)
*  CAMERA READY COPY: TECHNICAL and COMMUNICATION Papers:
   Monday 24th March 2008 (Midnight Hawaii Standard Time)
*  Conference Dates:
   Monday 21th and Tuesday 22nd April 2008

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.
* Authors of the best papers will be invited to submit extended versions to a special issue of New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia (NRHM). 

Topics and Content
-------------------
The World Wide Web (Web) is returning to its origins. Surfers are not just passive readers but content creators. Wikis allow open editing and access, blogs enable personal expression, Flicker, YouTube, MySpace, and Facebook encourage social networking by enabling designs to be 'created' and 'wrapped' around content. Indeed it seems that only the Web infrastructure supporting expression is immutable and invisible to the user. Template based tools such as iWeb, Google Page Creator, and RapidWeaver enable fast professional looking Web site creation using automated placement, with templates for blogging, picture sharing, and social networking, these tools often require publishing to a system specific server, such as '.mac'. In this case we wonder if the conjugation of authoring tools and user agents represents an opportunity for automatically generated Web Accessibility or yet another problem for Web Accessibility? Will form based and highly graphical interfaces excluded disabled users from creation, expression and social networking? What problems exist, what are the upcoming problems, what solutions are required? What about the accessibility of the content designed and created by surfers? Finally, what effect will this have on the wider Web? We pose the question: What happens when surfers become authors and designers?

In this case topics of interests include (but are not limited to):

    * Investigations focused on Template Based Technology;
    * User Experimentation looking at Social Networking and Freedom of Expression;
    * GUI and Form investigations with regard to access;
    * How Wikis and Blogging Tools effect accessibility of content creation;
    * Evaluation and Validation tools and techniques for Wiki and Blogging tools;
    * Web Content Creation Tools;
    * Web Authoring Guidelines;
    * 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; and
    * Accessible graphic formats and tools for their creation.


Submission
--------------------
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/2008/backingfiles/sig-alternate.cls
http://www.w4a.info/2008/backingfiles/sig-alternate.tex
http://www.w4a.info/2008/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/2008/backingfiles/pubform.doc

More information on the style files and submission procedure can be found at: http://www.w4a.info/2008/submission.shtml.

Please submit documents via the conference website (http://www.w4a.info/).

Sponsors
-------------------
The Mozilla Foundation (http://www.mozillafoundation.org/)
ACM's Special Interest Group on Accessible Computing (SIGACCESS) (http://www.acm.org/sigaccess/)
Zakon Group (http://www.zakongroup.com/)

Endorsement
-------------------
W4A 2008 is endorsed by the International World Wide Web Conferences Steering Committee (IW3C2)

Programme Committee
-------------------
Julio Abascal - University of the Basque Country, Spain.
Margherita Antona - ICS-FORTH, Greece.
Chieko Asakawa - IBM, Japan.
Helen Ashman - The University of South Australia, Australia.
Armando Barreto - Florida International University, USA.
Giorgio Brajnik - Università di Udine, Italy.
Catherine Brys - University of Strathclyde, UK.
Sofia Celic - Vision Australia, Australia.
Michael Cooper - W3C, USA.
David Duce - Oxford Brookes University, UK.
Becky Gibson - IBM Emerging Internet Technologies, USA.
Brian Kelly - UKOLN, UK.
Richard E. Ladner - University of Washington, USA.
Laura Leventhal - Bowling Green State University, USA.
Klaus Miesenberger - University of Linz, Austria.
David G. Novick - The University of Texas at El Paso, USA.
Zeljko Obrenovic - CWI, Netherlands
Helen Petrie - University of York, UK.
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.
Paola Salomoni - Università di Bologna, Italy.
Andrew Sears - UMBC, USA.
Cynthia Shelly - Microsoft, USA.
Robert Stevens - University of Manchester, UK.
Hironobu Takagi - IBM Research, 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. 

General Chair
-------------------
Yeliz Yesilada
Information Management Group,
University of Manchester,
MANCHESTER, M13 9PL, UK

Email: gc-2008-at-w4a.info

Programme Chair
-------------------
David Sloan
School of Computing
University of Dundee
DUNDEE, DD1 4HN, UK

Email: pc-2008@w4a.info

W4A on the Web
-------------------
http://www.w4a.info
http://www.w4a.info/updates.xml (RSS/ATOM News Feed)

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