The 9th International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility
W4A 2012 (use #w4a12)
Co-Located with the 21th International World Wide Web Conference, WWW2012
in Lyon, France, 16-17 April 2012
Link: http://www.w4a.info/2012/
====================================================================
‘The Web of Data and Web Accessibility’
Topics and Content
————————————-
The World Wide Web has changed the way we search, access, consume and produce information. While existing superficial content allows us to browse and interact with the Web, we are far from taking full advantage of it. Laying beneath the surface of the Web there are a number of phenomena such as trends and patterns in information structure and in user behaviour that do shape the way we communicate, consume and browse. As far as accessibility is concerned, Web content plays a central role in an ecosystem where user agents, authoring tools, crowd-sourcing frameworks and testing tools determine how ccessible is the Web. As these components are moving to the cloud, their mere activity and interplay produces large amounts of data. For instance, thousands of testing reports are being generated every day by automatic tools and auditors. Moreover, crowd-sourcing tools are facilitating a myriad of accessibility fixes and providing guidance to users.
In parallel, announcements made by UK and US governments, amongst others, to make public data available are contributing to adding enormous amounts of data to the Web. While some of these data repositories consist of raw data, some other are explicitly structured and semantically annotated set of documents. However, users still find it difficult to access to these data mainly because of information overload and access barriers. So even if the major goal of Open Government initiatives is to foster transparency, the reality is that citizens struggle to access.
So we can find data produced by the accessibility ecosystem -users and tools- and intentionally uploaded data. The former, if adequately exploited, can yield invaluable knowledge to better understand web accessibility as a phenomenon. The latter provide us mechanisms to arrange these data on the web so that they are accessible for machines although not for humans.
As a result, topics of interests include
(but are not limited to):
* Intelligent processing of the massively produced reports by accessibility testing tools.
* Web mining and AI techniques for accessibility testing and repairing.
* Usage patterns of accessibility tools on the cloud.
* How to use data produced by means of crowd-sourcing accessibility fixes.
* How data produced while interacting and traversing the Web can improve accessibility.
* How to create user profiles from log data.
* The characterization of the Web at a macro and micro-scale.
* Accessibility of Linked Data repositories.
* Using Linked Data to better organise knowledge on Web 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
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.
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). The official language of the Conference is
English.
Submission details are available at:
http://www.w4a.info/2012/submissions
Important Dates
————————————-
All Submissions Close (Midnight Hawaii Standard Time)
04-Feb-2012
Author Rebuttal Period Ends (Midnight Hawaii Standard Time)
18-Feb-2012
All Decisions
28-Feb-2012
All Final Versions
16-Mar-2012
More details: http://www.w4a.info/2012/submissions/important-dates
General Chairs
————————————-
Julio Abascal, University of the Basque Country, Spain
Markel Vigo, University of Manchester, UK
Programme Chairs
————————————-
Rui Lopes, University of Lisbon, Portugal
Paola Salomoni, University of Bologna, Italy
Challenge Chairs
————————————-
Jeffrey Bigham, University of Rochester, USA
Eugene Bodorin, SUNY, USA
Google Student Award
————————————-
Anna Cavender, Google
Shari Trewin, IBM Research
Special Issue
————————————-
Chieko Asakawa, IBM Japan
Hironobu Takagi, IBM Japan
Publications
————————————-
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. Selected authors will be invited to submit extended versions of their paper for publication in a journal to be announced.
W4A stats
————————————-
As of July 2011 average downloads per article at the ACM Digital Library is 387 and average citations per article 2.43. To see the stats check the ACM Digital Library site for the W4A conference at http://portal.acm.org/event.cfm?id=RE143
W4A on the Web
————————————-
http://www.w4a.info
http://www.w4a.info/updates.xml (RSS/ATOM News Feed)
DON’T BE DETERRED!
While ‘The Web of Data’ is 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.The 9th International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility
W4A 2012 (use #w4a12)
Co-Located with the 21th International World Wide Web Conference, WWW2012
in Lyon, France, 16-17 April 2012
Link: http://www.w4a.info/2012/
====================================================================
‘The Web of Data and Web Accessibility’
Topics and Content
————————————-
The World Wide Web has changed the way we search, access, consume and produce information. While existing superficial content allows us to browse and interact with the Web, we are far from taking full advantage of it. Laying beneath the surface of the Web there are a number of phenomena such as trends and patterns in information structure and in user behaviour that do shape the way we communicate, consume and browse. As far as accessibility is concerned, Web content plays a central role in an ecosystem where user agents, authoring tools, crowd-sourcing frameworks and testing tools determine how ccessible is the Web. As these components are moving to the cloud, their mere activity and interplay produces large amounts of data. For instance, thousands of testing reports are being generated every day by automatic tools and auditors. Moreover, crowd-sourcing tools are facilitating a myriad of accessibility fixes and providing guidance to users.
In parallel, announcements made by UK and US governments, amongst others, to make public data available are contributing to adding enormous amounts of data to the Web. While some of these data repositories consist of raw data, some other are explicitly structured and semantically annotated set of documents. However, users still find it difficult to access to these data mainly because of information overload and access barriers. So even if the major goal of Open Government initiatives is to foster transparency, the reality is that citizens struggle to access.
So we can find data produced by the accessibility ecosystem -users and tools- and intentionally uploaded data. The former, if adequately exploited, can yield invaluable knowledge to better understand web accessibility as a phenomenon. The latter provide us mechanisms to arrange these data on the web so that they are accessible for machines although not for humans.
As a result, topics of interests include
(but are not limited to):
* Intelligent processing of the massively produced reports by accessibility testing tools.
* Web mining and AI techniques for accessibility testing and repairing.
* Usage patterns of accessibility tools on the cloud.
* How to use data produced by means of crowd-sourcing accessibility fixes.
* How data produced while interacting and traversing the Web can improve accessibility.
* How to create user profiles from log data.
* The characterization of the Web at a macro and micro-scale.
* Accessibility of Linked Data repositories.
* Using Linked Data to better organise knowledge on Web 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
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.
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). The official language of the Conference is
English.
Submission details are available at:
http://www.w4a.info/2012/submissions
Important Dates
————————————-
All Submissions Close (Midnight Hawaii Standard Time)
04-Feb-2012
Author Rebuttal Period Ends (Midnight Hawaii Standard Time)
18-Feb-2012
All Decisions
28-Feb-2012
All Final Versions
16-Mar-2012
More details: http://www.w4a.info/2012/submissions/important-dates
General Chairs
————————————-
Julio Abascal, University of the Basque Country, Spain
Markel Vigo, University of Manchester, UK
Programme Chairs
————————————-
Rui Lopes, University of Lisbon, Portugal
Paola Salomoni, University of Bologna, Italy
Challenge Chairs
————————————-
Jeffrey Bigham, University of Rochester, USA
Eugene Bodorin, SUNY, USA
Google Student Award
————————————-
Anna Cavender, Google
Shari Trewin, IBM Research
Special Issue
————————————-
Chieko Asakawa, IBM Japan
Hironobu Takagi, IBM Japan
Publications
————————————-
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. Selected authors will be invited to submit extended versions of their paper for publication in a journal to be announced.
W4A stats
————————————-
As of July 2011 average downloads per article at the ACM Digital Library is 387 and average citations per article 2.43. To see the stats check the ACM Digital Library site for the W4A conference at http://portal.acm.org/event.cfm?id=RE143
W4A on the Web
————————————-
http://www.w4a.info
http://www.w4a.info/updates.xml (RSS/ATOM News Feed)
DON’T BE DETERRED!
While ‘The Web of Data’ is 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.