First Call for Papers

The Third International Cross-Disciplinary Workshop on Web Accessibility
(W4A 2006)
    'Building the Mobile Web: Rediscovering Accessibility?'

Located at the Fifteenth International World Wide Web Conference (WWW 2006) 
May 22, 2006, in Edinburgh, Scotland, UK

http://www.w4a.info


Keynotes

    Sarah Horton is an instructional technology specialist at Dartmouth
    College and is the author of 'Access by design: A guide to universal
    usability for Web designers'.

    Aaron Leventhal is an IBM Web accessibility architect and is the leader
    of the Mozilla Accessibility Project.

    Dr. Rhys Lewis is Chief Scientist for Volantis Systems Ltd. and is the
    chair of the Device Independence Working Group (DIWG) of the World Wide
    Web Consortium (W3C).

    Donna Smillie is a senior Web accessibility consultant at the Royal
    National Institute of the Blind (RNIB), UK


Publications

    The workshop proceedings will be published as part of the ACM
    International Conference Proceedings Series and will be available at the
    ACM Digital Library.

    Selected papers will be invited to submit a revised version for
    consideration for a special issue of the Springer Journal - Universal
    Access in the Information Society (UAIS). These papers will go through an
    additional reviewing process to ensure quality.


Topics and Content

We invite submissions for W4A 2004 addressing our current theme of 'Building
the Mobile Web: Rediscovering Accessibility?'.

After the launch of the Mobile Web Initiative at the World Wide Web
Conference 2005 we are beginning to realise that, today, mobile Web access
suffers from interoperability and usability problems that make the Web
difficult to use. With the move to small screen size, low bandwidth, and
different operating modalities, technology is in effect simulating the
sensory and cognitive impairments experienced by disabled users within the
wider population of mobile device users. In this our 3rd Workshop we ask the
question:

    'Is engineering, designing, and building for the mobile Web just a rehash
    of the same old Web accessibility problems?'

We wish to bring together different communities working on similar problems
to share ideas, discuss overlaps, and make the fledging mobile Web community
aware of accessibility work that may have been overlooked. We ask is
designing for accessibility and small screened devices really the same thing
requiring the same solutions and can we work together to solve these
problems? What can the Mobile Web learn from the Accessible Web and what
resources created to support the Accessible Web can be used by designers in
their support of the Mobile Web.


Topics of interests include (but are not limited to):

    Advances in Mobile Web technologies;
    Design and best practice to support the Mobile Web and accessibility;
    Technological advances to support web accessibility;
    End user tools;
    Accessibility and Mobile Web 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.


Submission and Important Dates

We will accept both position and technical papers. Position papers should
only be in short paper format whereas technical papers can be in short or
long paper format. In addition to the technical session, this year we are
introducing a NEW best practice session (see details below). The following
style files must be used for submissions:

LaTeX:
http://www.w4a.info/2006/backingfiles/sig-alternate.cls
http://www.w4a.info/2006/backingfiles/sig-alternate.tex
http://www.w4a.info/2006/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/2006/backingfiles/pubform.doc

More information on the style files and submission procedure can be found at:
http://www.w4a.info/2006/submission.shtml.

We encourage authors to submit concise technical papers between 8 and 12
pages. Short papers and position papers should not exceed 4 pages. Please
submit documents via the workshop website (http://www.w4a.info/).

    Submissions due:                Monday 20th March 2006

    Notification for acceptance:    Monday 17th April 2006

    Camera ready due:               Monday 24th April 2006

    Workshop date:                  Monday 22nd May   2006


Best Practice Session

This year we also invite best practice papers that explain experiences of
designing accessible pages or making existing pages accessible. These papers
aim to bridge the gap between research on Web accessibility and best
practice. Submissions for this session need to be 2-4 pages long. If you are
planning to submit papers for this session, please inform the workshop chairs
(chairs@w4a.info) in advance.

More information on the submission procedure can be found at:
http://www.w4a.info/2006/bestpractice.shtml


Contact

Simon Harper, Yeliz Yesilada, and Carole Goble
Information Management Group
University of Manchester
MANCHESTER, M13 9PL, UK 


Email

chairs@w4a.info

Posted by: Vicki L. Hanson on SIG-Access
