W4A 2010 -- Preliminary Call for Papers

The Seventh International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web
Accessibility (W4A 2010)

'Developing Regions: Common Goals, Common Problems?'

Co-Located with the Nineteenth International World Wide Web Conference
(WWW2010), in Raleigh, North Carolina, USA, 26-27 April 2010.

Important Dates
-------------------
* SUBMISSIONS:

TECHNICAL and COMMUNICATION Papers:
01 Feb 2010 (Midnight Hawaii Standard Time)

WEB ACCESSIBILITY CHALLENGE:
19th Feb 2010 (Midnight Hawaii Standard Time)

More details: <http://www.w4a.info/2010/submissions/dates.shtml>

Keynote Speakers
--------------------------
* Steve Bratt (CEO, WWW Foundation)

* Gregg Vanderheiden (Director Trace R&D Center, Professor, University
of Wisconsin-Madison)

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
-------------------
A revolution in the information society is now starting, based on the
use of mobile phones in developing countries. The hyper-growth of
mobile phone penetration is deeply changing the lives of people in
most of the world; their ways of communicating, working, learning, and
structuring their societies. The promising next step is obviously to
access the Web. The Web has already touched the lives of over a
billion people and now is the time for the next billions.

However, this expansion faces unprecedented accessibility
challenges. Even the word "accessibility" needs a new definition for
people in the developing regions. How can someone who is illiterate or
barely literate access the Web? In some cases, a language may not even
have a written form. The affordability of the technology is also a
challenge, while access is constrained by low computational power,
limited bandwidth, compact keyboards, tiny screens, and even by the
lack of electric power. All of these constraints compound the problems
of access and inclusion.

The desire for access in developing regions and the resourcefulness of
the people who want inclusion unite the communities of people in
developing regions and the communities of disabled people in the
developed world. Will complex and highly graphical interfaces exclude
developing regions from access? What problems exist, what are the
newly appearing problems, and what solutions are required? How do the
adoption patterns for Web accessibility and inclusion vary across
cultures? What effect will the Web in the developing regions have on
accessibility in the developed regions and vice versa?

Note that while the commonalities between Web Accessibility and
Developing Regions are this years theme, please don't be deterred if
this somewhat unique area is not yours. We would like to see all
quality work on Web Accessibility regardless of the particular field
within accessibility. The overriding reason for a paper being accepted
is its high quality in relation to the broad area of Web
Accessibility.

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

* Inclusion and Citizen Empowerment in Developing Regions;
* Inclusion and Literacy in Developing Regions;
* Enhancing Education in Developing Regions;
* Accessibility Problems in Developing Regions;
* Web Based Employment in Developing Regions;
* Web Based Health Care in Developing Regions;
* Evaluation and Validation tools and techniques;
* User Experimentation looking at Social Networking and Freedom of  
Expression;
* User Agents for Developing Regions and User Agent Guidelines;
* 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 (up to 4-pages) whereas technical papers should be in
full paper format (up to 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/2010/submissions/index.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/2010/submissions/challenge.shtml>


Endorsement
-------------------
W4A 2010 is endorsed by the International World Wide Web Conferences
Steering Committee (IW3C2)


General Chair
-------------------
Chieko Asakawa and Hironobu Takagi
Accessibility Research, Tokyo Research Laboratory, IBM Research, Tokyo
Japan

Email: gc-2010-at-w4a.info


Programme Chairs
-------------------
Leo Ferres
Department of Computer Science, Universidad de Concepción,
Chile

Cynthia Shelly
Microsoft Co.
USA

Email: <pc-2010@w4a.info>

Challenge Chairs
-------------------
Julio Abascal, Myriam Arrue and Markel Vigo
UPV/EHU,
Spain


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

Received on Wednesday, 23 September 2009 06:30:45 UTC