W4A’15 (www.w4a.info <http://www.w4a.info>) focuses on improving
accessibility of the Web, Mobiles, and Wearables for people with
and WITHOUT disabilities. The conference offers:
1) Full coverage IBM travel award to students with physical
disabilities;
2) $1,250 to PhD students participating in Google’s Doctoral
Consortium;
3) $2,000 and $1,000 to the best full and short papers respectively.
The deadline is approaching fast (January 23), the full CFP follows.
Happy New Year!
Yevgen Borodin, PhD
Research Assistant Professor, Computer Science Department
Stony Brook University, NY, USA
CEO, Charmtech Labs LLC (www.captivoice.com
<http://www.captivoice.com>)
“Listen to Anything You Want to Read”
---
We welcome you to submit your best work on improving accessibility
of the Web, Mobiles, and Wearables for people with and without
disabilities to the International Web for All Conference (W4A’15),
conveniently co-located with WWW’15 and MobiSys’15.
W4A’15 (www.w4a.info <http://www.w4a.info>) will take place in
Florence, Italy (May 18-20):
- Intuit will award $2,000 and $1,000 to the best technical and
communication papers
- The Paciello Group will award the winners of the Accessibility
Challenge
- ABILITY Magazine will highlight the winners of awards in a
special editorial
- IBM will provide travel grants to both grad and undergrad
students with disabilities
- Google will sponsor 6 PhD students to participate in the
Doctoral Student Consortium
- Submission deadlines: Jan 23rd, Notifications: March 4th
As you know, devices are getting smaller, and more of them are now
wearable: smart glasses, smart watches, and smart clothing are all
working their way into our lives and onto our bodies. These
devices are online, web-accessible, and increasingly
interconnected. As with many technologies that have come before,
wearable devices present incredible opportunities for improving
accessibility for people with and without disabilities, but also
present accessibility challenges in ensuring that people are able
to equally benefit from them regardless of disability, context or
situation. Acknowledging the importance of this topic, the theme
of the 12th International Web for All Conference is “The Wearable
Web”.
Don’t be deterred by the theme; we invite your best work on
improving and understanding access for people across the
accessibility continuum. Papers are expected to detail technical
solutions and scientific insights into Web, Mobile, and Wearable
technologies addressing diverse user needs. Areas of interest
include but are not limited to the following: age, cognition,
culture, education, emotions, dexterity, disability, diversity,
health, hearing, income, infrastructure, language, learning,
literacy, mobility, situation, society, and vision.
The keynote speech on the "Sense and sensibility: smartphones and
wearable technologies to support seniors" will be delivered by
Lorenzo Chiari who is a Professor and the Vice-Director of the
Health Sciences and Technologies - Interdepartmental Center for
Industrial Research at the University of Bologna. On the close of
the 1st day, join us for the evening of wine, food, and live music
– with a Classical performance by Lia Martirosyan. The “William
Laughborough” after-dinner talk "Riches Beyond Measure: A New
Frontier in Web Accessibility" will be given by Kevin Carey, the
Chair of the Royal National Institute of Blind People, UK.
Don’t come just for W4A’15 – stay for the entire week! W4A is
conveniently co-located with WWW’15 and MobiSys’15 conferences.
MobiSys’15 is the top research conference dealing with all aspects
of mobile systems: http://www.sigmobile.org/mobisys/2015/cfp.php.
And WWW’15 (http://www.www2015.it/) is the best and the biggest
Web research conference attended by famous Web researchers and
practitioners, such as Sir Tim Berners-Lee (the inventor of the
Web). Among other events, we will hold a joint WWW/W4A panel
session devoted to the “Wearable Web” theme.
