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 * 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: ttp://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) ------------------- Yeliz Yesilada yesilady@cs.man.ac.uk