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W4A 2013 Web Accessibility Challenge - Second Call for Submissions (#w4a13)

for

From: Greg Gay
Date: Feb 1, 2013 8:12AM

The Sixth Web Accessibility Challenge in conjunction with the W4A 2013
Conference will take place at the WWW 2013 conference from May 13 to 15
in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Goal
====
The Web Accessibility Challenge is organised as an opportunity for
researchers and developers of advanced Web accessibility technologies to
showcase their technologies to technical leaders in this area, not only
from academia and industry but also from end-users of these
technologies. 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 their significance in advancing research and
technology in accessibility for that year.

Topic
====
Please note that submissions can be related to the theme, “Bring Your
Own Device” 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/2013/submissions/)

- 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
( <EMAIL REMOVED> ).


Important dates
============
Submission deadline is 15-Feb-2013 (Midnight Hawaii Standard Time).


Challenge Judges
==============
- Jan Richards. Editor W3C WAI Authoring Tool Accessibility Working
Group, Project Manager Inclusive Design Institute, OCAD University Canada.

- Martyn Copper. Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Educational
Technology, Open University UK.

- Ana Isabel B.B. Paraguay. Consultant, Researcher at Officio Ergonomia,
Brazil

- Mike Paciello. Founder & CEO The Paciello Group USA



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.

- 2013 Web Accessibility Challenge: Judges Award decided by the invited
judges, who are experts from academia, industry and end-users.

- 2013 Web Accessibility Challenge: Delegates Award decided by the
participants of the conference.


Submission details
===============
- Submissions should be sent to this email address: <EMAIL REMOVED>

- 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 “w4a2013” to the movie, and send the URL of the movie to the
submission address ( <EMAIL REMOVED> ).

- 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 adding 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 - i.e. 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 (see
http://www.w4a.info/2013/submissions/), 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 2013 Conference and this year's
challenge, please see the website:
http://www.w4a.info/2013/
http://www.w4a.info/2013/submissions/challenge/

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 message along.

We are looking forward to meeting you in Rio

Kindest regards,

W4A Web Accessibility Challenge organizers
Greg Gay (OCAD University Canada)
Silvia Mirri (University of Bologna Italy)