W4A 2009, Madrid, 20-21 April: Final Call for Papers

Apologies for cross-posting...
David

***FINAL CALL FOR PAPERS***

The Sixth International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web
Accessibility (W4A 2009)

'Web Accessibility for Older Users: Are We There Yet?'

Co-Located with the Eighteenth International World Wide Web Conference
(WWW2009), in Madrid, Spain, 20-21 April 2009.

Important Date
-------------------
* SUBMISSIONS: 

TECHNICAL and COMMUNICATION Papers:
30th Jan 2009 (Midnight Hawaii Standard Time)

WEB ACCESSIBILITY CHALLENGE:
20th Feb 2009 (Midnight Hawaii Standard Time)

More details: http://www.w4a.info/2009/dates.shtml

Keynote Speakers
--------------------------
* Michael Paciello (The Paciello Group)
* Andrew Arch (WAI-AGE Web Accessibility and Ageing Specialist,
  W3C/ERCIM)

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.


Topics and Content
-------------------
Population demographics indicate that our populations are ageing
across the board. As the population ages the financial requirement to
work longer is increased, but the ability to work longer is reduced
because disability becomes a bar to employment. With the growth of the
knowledge economy, and a move from manual work to more thought and
communication based activities, there is the very real possibility of
older Web users being able to finding productive, fulfilling, and
social empowering employment; if only technology, and specifically the
Web, where available to them. An ageing but Web-literate population
indicates a large market for online shopping and services especially
when mobility is a problem for the shopper.

In this case we wonder how this new population we interact with Web
based resources, and what new problems in accessibility will there be
to overcome? Will the Web provide the social, employment, and health
care benefits currently unavailable to older users? Will complex and
highly graphical interfaces excluded ageing users from access? How do
the adaptation patterns for Web access by older people vary across
cultures? What problems exist, what are the upcoming problems, what
solutions are required? Finally, what effect will an ageing user
population have on the wider Web? We pose the question: Web
accessibility for older users - are we there yet?


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 (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.

Submission details are available at:
http://www.w4a.info/2009/submissions.shtml


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/2009/challenge.shtml


Sponsors
-------------------
* Microsoft Corporation (http://www.microsoft.com)
* Google (http://www.google.com)
* 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 2009 is endorsed by the International World Wide Web Conferences
Steering Committee (IW3C2)
 

General Chair
-------------------
David Sloan
School of Computing, University of Dundee, DUNDEE
UK

Email: gc-2009-at-w4a.info


Programme Chairs
-------------------
Hiro Takagi and Chieko Asakawa
Accessibility Research, Tokyo Research Laboratory, IBM Research, TOKYO
Japan

Email: pc-2009@w4a.info

Programme Committee
-------------------
* Julio Abascal (University of the Basque Country,Spain.)
* Shadi Abou-Zahra (World Wide Web Consortium ,USA.)
* Margherita Antona (ICS-FORTH,Greece.)
* Helen Ashman (The University of South Australia,Australia.)
* Armando Barreto (Florida International University,USA.)
* Jeffrey Bigham (University of Washington,USA.)
* Yevgen Borodin (Stony Brook University,USA.)
* Giorgio Brajnik (Universita di Udine,Italy.)
* Catherine Brys (University of Strathclyde,UK.)
* Alan Chuter (Technosite (ONCE Foundation.),Spain.)
* Sara Czaja (University of Miami,USA.)
* Olga DeTroyer (Vrije Universiteit Brussel,Belgium.)
* David Duce (Oxford Brookes University,UK.)
* Becky Gibson (IBM Emerging Internet Technologies,USA.)
* Vicki Hanson (University of Dundee,UK.)
* Simon Harper (University of Manchester,UK.)
* Sarah Horton (Dartmouth College,USA.)
* Sri Kurniawan (University of California Santa Cruz,USA.)
* Richard Ladner (University of Washington,USA.)
* Jonathan Lazar (Towson University,USA.)
* Laura Leventhal (Bowling Green State University,USA.)
* Rui Lopes (University of Lisbon ,Portugal.)
* Klaus Miesenberger (University of Linz,Austria.)
* David Novick (The University of Texas at El Paso,USA.)
* Zeljko Obrenovic (Technical University Eindhoven (TU/e),Netherland.)
* Enrico Pontelli (New Mexico State University,USA.)
* Christopher Power (University of York,UK.)
* IV Ramakrishnan (State University of New York at Stony Brook,USA.)
* Gustavo Rossi (Universidad Nacional de La Plata,Argentina.)
* Paola Salomoni (University of Bologna,Italy.)
* Andrew Sears (UMBC,USA.)
* Cynthia Shelly (Microsoft,USA.)
* Constantine Stephanidis (ICS-FORTH,Greece.)
* Shari Trewin (IBM T.J. Watson Research Center,USA.)
* Douglas Tudhope (University of Glamorgan,UK.)
* Takayuki Watanabe (Tokyo Woman's Christian University,Japan.)
* Yeliz Yesilada (University of Manchester,UK.)

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


The University of Dundee is a Scottish Registered Charity, No. SC015096.