- From: Yeliz Yesilada <yesilady@cs.man.ac.uk>
- Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2010 22:14:24 +0200
- To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
The 8th International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A 2011) <http://www.w4a.info> Co-Located with the 20th International World Wide Web Conference, WWW2011 in Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India, 28-29 March 2011 Crowdsourcing the Cloud: An Inclusive Web by All and For All? Topics and Content ------------------------------------- Cloud-computing is the technological paradigm where computing resources are distributed over the Internet. This way, the browser becomes the interface to access services and applications with almost unlimited storage capacity and processing power. Cloud-computing and the applications deployed over it facilitate collective intelligence and crowdsourcing phenomena, where millions of users can contribute to a common goal. Following these approaches, a number of successful projects that focus on web accessibility have been released in recent years. These developments range from platforms to collectively removing accessibility barriers to making assistive technologies widespread and available for all. These preliminary approaches such as online screen-readers and accessibility repairing applications have yielded promising results towards an inclusive web by removing both economical and accessibility barriers. In order to develop the cloud to its full potential as far as accessibility is concerned, there are still several research questions that should address the weak points and challenges in a timely manner in order to create an inclusive Web. Will crowdsourcing the cloud lead us to an inclusive Web by all and for all? Will crowdsourcing the cloud remove accessibility barriers for all? Will crowdsourcing the cloud make the Web accessible or inaccessible? From this point of view, W4A 2011 is interested in the following topics in particular (but not exclusively!): * Cloud computing based assistive technologies * Deployment, acceptance and scalability issues of cloud computing accessibility tools * Tools for collaborative accessibility testing * Tools to collectively repair accessibility problems * Empirical studies and data analysis of crowdsourcing for accessibility * Cooperative authoring tools * Quality assurance of crowdsourcing generated content * Methodologies for crowdsourcing procedures for accessibility * Web authoring guidelines and tools * Mobile accessibility * User modeling and the adaptive web * Adaptation and transformation of existing Web content * 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 * Accessible graphic formats and tools for their creation While cloud computing and crowdsourcing are this year's 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. Microsoft 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/2011/submissions/challenge.shtml> 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/2011/submissions/index.shtml> Important Dates ------------------------------------- Technical and Communication Papers: 10 Jan 2011 (Midnight Hawaii Standard Time) Web Accessibility Challenge: 31 Jan 2011 (Midnight Hawaii Standard Time) Decision: 07 Feb 2011 (Midnight Hawaii Standard Time) More details: <http://www.w4a.info/2011/submissions/dates.shtml> 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. Selected authors will be invited to submit extended versions of their paper for publication in a Journal to be announced. Keynote Speakers ------------------------------------ Manish Gupta, Director at IBM Research (India) and Chief Technologist at IBM India (South Asia) Bebo White, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) - "William Loughborough Dinner Keynote" Google Student Awards ------------------------------------- The Second "Student Awards Programme", sponsored since 2010 by Google, is organised to give an opportunity to high quality students with limited funding to attend the W4A Conference. Thanks to generous sponsorship from Google, two awards, each of up to US$1200, are available to support students to attend W4A 2011. We now invite applications from interested students. <http://www.w4a.info/2011/submissions/studentawards.shtml> Endorsement ------------------------------------- This years W4A is endorsed by the IW3C2 in cooperation with the ACM and its Special Interest Groups SIGWEB and SIGCHI. The general conference is supported by IBM Research, Microsoft, and Google, while the Web Accessibility Challenge is specifically sponsored by Microsoft, and the Student Awards are specifically sponsored by a Google. General Chair (gc-2011-at-w4a.info) ------------------------------------- Leo Ferres, Universidad de Concepcion, Chile Programme Chairs (pc-2011@w4a.info) ------------------------------------- Julio Abascal, University of the Basque Country, Spain Markel Vigo, CICtourGUNE, Spain Challenge Chairs (cc2011@w4a.info) ------------------------------------- Rui Lopes, University of Lisbon, Portugal Paola Salomoni, University of Bologna, Italy Student Awards (students2011@w4a.info) ------------------------------------- Jeffrey P. Bigham, University of Rochester, USA Yevgen Borodin, Stony Brook University, USA Programme Committee ------------------------------------- Shadi Abou-Zahra, W3C Margherita Antona, ICS-FORTH Helen Ashman, The University of South Australia Myriam Arrue, University of the Basque Country Melanie Baljko, York University Armando Barreto, Florida International University Yevgen Borodin, Stony Brook University Giorgio Brajnik, Università di Udine Andy Brown, University of Manchester Anna Cavender, University of Washington Wendy Chisholm, University of Washington Olga De Troyer, Vrije Universiteit Brussel David Duce, Oxford Brookes University Inmaculada Fajardo, University of Valencia Kelly Ford, Microsoft Inc. Renata Fortes, University of Sao Paulo Greg Gay, University of Toronto Becky Gibson, IBM Emerging Internet Technologies Simon Harper, University of Manchester Sarah Horton, Dartmouth College Matt Huenerfauth, City University of New York Caroline Jay, University of Manchester Brian Kelly, UKOLN, University of Bath Arun Kumar, IBM India Rui Lopes, University of Lisbon Katherine McCoy, University of Delaware Eleni Michailidou, University of Manchester Klaus Miesenberger, University of Linz David Novick, The University of Texas at El Paso Zeljko Obrenovic, Technical University Eindhoven Mike Paciello, The Paciello Group Oscar Pastor, Universidad Politécnica de Valencia Enrico Pontelli, New Mexico State University IV Ramakrishnan, Stony Brook University Gustavo Rossi, Universidad Nacional de La Plata Paola Salomoni, University of Bologna Andrew Sears, UMBC Cynthia Shelly, Microsoft Corporation David Sloan, University of Dundee Hironobu Takagi, IBM Research Tokyo Shari Trewin, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center Douglas Tudhope, University of Glamorgan Konstantinos Votis, Centre for Research and Technology Hellas Annalu Waller, University of Dundee Takayuki Watanabe, Tokyo Woman's Christian University Yeliz Yesilada, METU NCC/University of Manchester W4A stats ------------------------------------- Average downloads per article at the ACM Digital Library is 434 and average citations per article 2.38. To see the stats check the ACM Digital Library site for the W4A conference at <http://portal.acm.org/event.cfm?id=RE143&CFID=112729227&CFTOKEN=66814088> Yeliz -------------------------------------------------------- School of Computer Science The University of Manchester Manchester M13 9PL URL: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~yesilady/ Tel: +44 (0) 161 275 6239 Fax: +44 (0) 845 139 5599 --------------------------------------------------------
Received on Thursday, 16 December 2010 20:15:03 UTC