W4A 2010 Fourth Web Accessibility Challenge - Call for Submissions
Yeliz Yesilada
2010 Conference will take place at the WWW 2010 conference in April
26 and 27 in Raleigh, NC.
Goal
====
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. To encourage and accelerate development of innovative and
practically usable Web accessibility technologies; the Challenge is
one part of the conference in which new experimental systems and
technologies are submitted, compared, and judged by our independent
panel of experts as to the most significant advance in research
technology in accessibility for that year.
Topic
====
Please note that submissions can be related to the theme, “Developing
Regions: Common Goals, Common Problems?” but it is certainly not a
requirement as all accessibility technologies are welcomed for the
challenge.
Submission materials
=================
We invite you to submit your work by submitting a:
- Two-page abstract (see the W4A submission page http://www.w4a.info/
2010/submissions/submissions.shtml)
- Demonstration movie (or audio recording) with audio description.
- Software is not required, but encouraged.
System requirements
=================
- Any kind of system is acceptable, such as standalone assistive
technologies, voice browsers, browser plug-ins, server-based
services, and telephony systems. Other accessibility technologies can
be accepted (e.g., tactile browser).
- Open source systems are welcomed.
- Please contact us, if you have any questions about the coverage
(cc2...@w4a.info).
Important dates
============
Submission deadline is 19-Feb-2010 (Midnight Hawaii Standard Time).
Challenge Judges
==============
- Barbara Leporini. Researcher at the Laboratory of Human Interfaces
in Information Systems, Italian National Research Council (CNR).
- Charles McCathieNevile. Chief Standards Officer at Opera.
- Inmaculada Placencia Porrero. Head of Unit for Integration of
People with Disabilities within the Directorate General for DG
Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities, European Commission.
- T.V. Raman. Research Scientist at Google.
- Jutta Treviranus. Director of the Adaptive Technology Resource
Centre (ATRC), University of Toronto.
Conference attendance
==================
A presentation and demonstration session will be part of the W4A
event, so at least one of the authors is required to attend the
conference.
Awards
======
A Judges Award and a Delegates Award will honour the best of the
submissions. You will also have a chance to receive feedback from the
judges as well as from the participants.
- 2010 Web Accessibility Challenge: Judges Award Decided by the
invited judges, who are experts from academia, industry and end-users.
- 2010 Web Accessibility Challenge: Delegates Award Decided by the
participants of the conference.
Submission details
===============
- Submissions should be sent to this email address: cc2...@w4a.info
- You can also consider alternative methods for submission of large
movie files such as uploading the file to YouTube. In this case,
please add a tag “w4a2010” to the movie, and send the URL of the
movie to the submission address (cc2...@w4a.info).
- Abstracts and movies should emphasise the innovative ideas in the
system. Do not demonstrate whole functions including usual or average
functions.
- The demonstration movies should also be non-visually accessible,
since some of referees are blind. Please consider to add audio
descriptions to the submission movie, and do not add unnecessary
audio (e.g., background music). In reality these presentations are
intended to remove the need for the judges to install experimental
application code and libraries on their own computers - in this case
the technology is judged on its intended use - and so a screen reader
for blind users may not have a textual output; in this case
captioning the audio would be inappropriate. However, any visual
presentation which is not part of the system - ie textual titles -
should be audio described, and any audio, such as supplementary
narration, should be captioned. In this way nothing is added to the
system demonstration contained within the presentation, unless the
submitter has augmented their work with additional descriptions etc.
- Abstracts should be in ACM/W4A paper format http://www.w4a.info/
2010/submissions/submissions.shtml, since abstracts will be published
in the proceedings. Abstracts and movies will be stored in the ACM
Digital Library.
For more information on the W4A 2010 Conference, please see the
website http://www.w4a.info/2010/
We would gladly welcome your participation with your latest
achievements. We hope you will please consider joining in. If you
know anyone else who may be interested in participating in this
Challenge, please do forward this email along.
We are looking forward to meeting you in Raleigh!
Kindest regards,
W4A Web Accessibility Challenge organizers
_____________________________________
Julio Abascal (University of the Basque Country)
Myriam Arrue (University of the Basque Country)
Markel Vigo (CICtourGUNE)