*FIRST CALL FOR PAPERS* 

The Fourth International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility
(W4A 2007) 

'Web 2.0 and the Semantic Web: Hindrance or Opportunity?' 

Co-Located with the Sixteenth International World Wide Web Conference  
(WWW2007), in Banff, Canada.  

http://www.w4a.info 
http://www.w4a.info/updates.xml (RSS/ATOM News Feed) 

KEYNOTES: 
* Michael Cooper (WAI - W3C) 
* Becky Gibson (Emerging Technologies Group - IBM, USA) 
* Ian Horrocks (School of Computer Science - University of Manchester, UK) 
* Mary Zajicek (Advanced User Interfaces Group - Oxford Brookes University,
  UK) 

IMPORTANT DATES: 
* TECHNICAL Submissions: Monday 19th Feb 2007 
* TECHNICAL Paper Notification: Friday 16th March 2007 
* COMMUNICATION Submissions: Monday 26th March 2007 
* COMMUNICATION Paper Notification: Friday 06th April 2007 
* ALL Camera ready Due: Monday 16th April 2007 
* Conference Dates: Monday 07th and Tuesday 08th May 2007 

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.  

TOPICS AND CONTENT: 
The World Wide Web (Web) is in transition; a fundamental evolution of   the
model which underpins the traditional Web. This new Web, Web   (2.0), is a
mesh of enhanced semantics, push application widgets, and   embedded
scripting languages and was developed to pursue the promise   of enhanced
interactivity. The possible benefits of the Web 2.0 is   great but it seems
that without timely and prompt action disabled   users will be barred from
these benefits. Indeed, using sites which   such as: Flicker, YouTube,
MySpace, Google Maps, and Google Portal   will rapidly become `off-limits' to
disabled users. Semantic Web   technologies have already shown themselves to
be useful in addressing   some issues of Web Accessibility. However, this new
technology has   not yet started to make its way into mainstream
applications. Without   change, will the benefits of the Semantic Web be
lost? Will the   promising enhanced interactivity of Web 2.0 technologies
become   increasingly inaccessible to disabled users? We pose the question: 

'Web 2.0 and the Semantic Web: Hindrance or Opportunity?' 

Topics of interests include (but are not limited to): 
* Advances in Web 2.0 and Semantic Web technologies; 
* Tools and technologies based on Web 2.0 and Semantic Web to support Web
  accessibility; 
* Tools and technologies to make Web 2.0 and Semantic Web applications and
  systems accessible; 
* 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; 
* Accessible graphic formats and tools for their creation. 

SUBMISSION AND IMPORTANT DATES: 
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.  

LaTeX: 
http://www.w4a.info/2007/backingfiles/sig-alternate.cls 
http://www.w4a.info/2007/backingfiles/sig-alternate.tex 
http://www.w4a.info/2007/backingfiles/sig-alternate.pdf 

Notes for LaTeX users: 
Ensure your submission is formatted for Letter paper. 
All authors should be listed on the front page. 

Microsoft Word: 
http://www.w4a.info/2007/backingfiles/pubform.doc 

More information on the style files and submission procedure can be   
found at: http://www.w4a.info/2007/submission.shtml. 

Please submit documents via the conference website (http:// www.w4a.info/). 

SPONSORS: 
The Mozilla Foundation
    (http://www.mozillafoundation.org/) 

The IBM Human Ability and Accessibility Center (HA&AC)
    (http:// www.ibm.com/able)

ACM's Special Interest Group on Accessible Computing (SIGACCESS)
    (http://www.acm.org/sigaccess/) 

Zakon Group
    (http://www.zakongroup.com/) 

PROGRAMME COMMITTEE: 
Julio Abascal, University of the Basque Country, Spain. 
Shadi Abou-Zahra, WAI, W3C. 
Margherita Antona, ICS-FORTH, Greece. 
Chieko Asakawa, IBM, Japan. 
Helen Ashman, University of Nottingham, UK. 
Sean Bechhofer, University of Manchester, UK. 
David Duce, Oxford Brookes University, UK. 
D. Gareth Evans, University of Manchester, UK. 
Vicki L. Hanson, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, USA. 
Sarah Horton, Dartmouth College, USA. 
Johnathon Lazar, Towson University, USA. 
Laura Leventhal, Bowling Green State University, USA. 
David Lowe, University of Technology Sydney, Australia. 
Klaus Miesenberger, University of Linz, Austria. 
David G. Novick, The University of Texas at El Paso, USA. 
Zeljko Obrenovic, CWI, Netherlands 
Enrico Pontelli, New Mexico State University, USA. 
IV Ramakrishnan, State University of New York at Stony Brook, USA. 
Gustavo H. Rossi, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina. 
Andrew Sears, UMBC, USA. 
David Sloan, University of Dundee, Scotland - UK. 
Constantine Stephanidis, FORTH ICS, Greece. 
Alistair Sutcliffe, University of Manchester, UK. 
Shari Trewin, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, USA. 
Olga De Troyer, VUB, Belgium. 
Douglas Tudhope, University of Glamorgan, Wales - UK. 
Takayuki Watanabe, Tokyo Woman's Christian University, Japan. 
Mary Zajicek, Oxford Brookes University, UK 

CONFERENCE CHAIRS: 
Simon Harper, Yeliz Yesilada, and Carole Goble 
Information Management Group, 
University of Manchester, 
MANCHESTER, M13 9PL, UK 

EMAIL: 
chairs@w4a.info 

SITE: 
http://www.w4a.info 
http://www.w4a.info/updates.xml (RSS/ATOM News Feed)

