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)

This year, we will also have an After Dinner Keynote at the conference dinner. We feel that this more casual environment will allow for an extended discussion among the conference attendees of the topics covered throughout the conference. Our 2010 After Dinner Keynote will be:

* William Loughborough (Smith-Kettlewell Institute of Visual Science)

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.
* Authors of selected papers presented at W4A 2010 will be invited to submit revised versions of their papers for publication in a Special Issue of the New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia (NRHM) journal. This follows two previous successful Special Issues of the same journal presenting research from past W4A conferences, and we're pleased to be able to continue our association with the journal.

New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia:
(http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/13614568.asp)

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:
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

Special Issue Chair
-------------------
David Sloan
University of Dundee, UK.


Programme Committee
-------------------

Margherita Antona, ICS-FORTH, Greece
Helen Ashman, The University of South Australia, Australia
Armando Barreto, Florida International University, USA
Eugene Borodin, Stony Brook University, USA
Giorgio Brajnik, Universita di Udine, Italy
Andy Brown, University of Manchester, UK
Anna Cavender, University of Washington
Wendy Chisholm, University of Washington
Alan Chuter, ONCE Foundation
Michael Cooper, W3C, USA
Olga De Troyer, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium
David Duce, Oxford Brookes University, UK
Kelly Ford, Microsoft, Inc., USA
Renata Fortes, University of Sao Paulo, Brasil
Becky Gibson, IBM Emerging Internet Technologies, USA
Vicki Hanson, University of Dundee, UK
Simon Harper, University of Manchester, UK
Sarah Horton, Dartmouth College, USA
Caroline Jay, University of Manchester, UK
Brian Kelly, UKOLN, University of Bath, UK
Rui Lopes, University of Lisbon, Portugal
Darren Lunn, University of Manchester, UK
Charles McCathieNevile, Opera Software
Eleni Michailidou, University of Manchester, UK
Klaus Miesenberger, University of Linz, Austria
David Novick, The University of Texas at El Paso, USA
Zeljko Obrenovic, Technical University Eindhoven (TU/e), Netherland
Michael Paciello, The Paciello Group, USA
Enrico Pontelli, New Mexico State University, USA
I.V. 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
David Sloan, University of Dundee, UK
Shari Trewin, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, USA
Victor Tsaran, Yahoo, Inc., 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))