The 15th Web for All Conference Lyon, France 2018

The W4A/TPG Web Accessibility Challenge has been generously sponsored by The Paciello Group, and is offered as a medium for researchers, web developers and software engineers to showcase new and innovative technologies in the area of Web accessibility.

The W4A/TPG Web Accessibility Challenge consists of two prizes: the Judges Award and the Delegates Award. The Judges Award is awarded by a panel of recognised experts from a wide range of sectors covering industry bodies and academic institutions. This year, we are honoured to have the participation of Anke Brock, Assistant Professor at ENAC in Toulouse; Mark T. Hakkinen - Educational Testing Service (ETS); Mike Wald - Professor at the University of Southampton; Andrea Mangiatordi - Assistant Professor at the University of Milan and Other Sharif - Comcast/EvoXlabs. We’d like to take this opportunity to thank the distinguished judges for their contribution to the conference.

The Delegates Award is awarded by the delegates of the W4A Conference by secret ballot after listening to the Challenge presentations and being able to experience the solutions during a demonstration session. This is an interesting and exciting part of the W4A Conference, since authors can make their own case for the impact of their Accessible Technology and the results may be different from the Judges' decision.

Given that entries to the main track can also qualify for the Delegates Award, we received a total of 5 high-quality entries from across globe including representatives from Brazil, the United Kingdom, Australia, India, the Czech Republic. The contributions focus on different areas of web accessibility, and, when examined as a whole, the solutions provide a collection of innovations that support the needs of a diverse range of users, fitting the ethos of the W4A Conference perfectly.

All authors will receive valuable feedback from the conference attendees, and have the possibility of networking with individuals from industry, academia and regulatory and standards bodies regarding their technologies.

David Sloan and Silvia Mirri

April 2018

W4A Google Doctoral Consortium

The 2018 W4A Conference also features the fourth edition of the W4A Google Doctoral Consortium. As in previous years we are generously supported by Google sponsoring the event, allowing us to give Doctoral Consortium Awards to talented students. The awards provide financial support for four students to attend the W4A Conference, present their research and gain valuable feedback from top researchers and practitioners in the field of Web Accessibility.

This year we received five submissions, leading to a selection process for the four successful candidates. All submissions were thoroughly reviewed by the panel of expert judges and evaluated with respect to previously announced review criteria in terms of their relevance to W4A, overall awareness of their field, originality of the work and its potential impact.

The W4A Organizing Committee would therefore like to thank the judges for their dedicated effort and is happy to introduce the 2018 participants in the Doctoral Consortium:

• Davide Mulfari, University of Pisa, Italy

• Muhammad Saleem, Edith Cowan University, Western Australia

• Jens Pelzetter, University of Bremen, Germany

• Claudia De Ros Rios Perez, Curtin University, Australia

The Doctoral Consortium session will be held the day before the main conference. Students present their research to the Doctoral Consortium Panel comprised of Helen Petrie (University of York), Sergio Mascetti (University of Milan), Silvia Rodríguez Vázquez (University of Geneva), Mireia Ribera (University of Barcelona), Hironobu Takagi (IBM), Yu Zhong (Google) and chaired by Giorgio Brajnik (University of Udine) and Dragan Ahmetovic (Carnegie Mellon University). In addition, all students will give short presentations of their work during the main conference and their extended abstracts are included in these proceedings.

Once again, we are most thankful to Google Inc. for their generous support, and we look forward to their ongoing involvement in W4A.

Giorgio Brajnik Dragan Ahmetovic

April 2018

WWW/W4A Unconference

On Wednesday, 25th April, delegates will have access to W4A informal ‘unconference’ activities. W4A brings together developers, researchers and practitioners from all over the world, many of whom share interests or are working on similar solutions to support accessibility for a range of users. We will provide a space to facilitate discussion, foster collaboration and build new relationships in the community among W4A delegates who are recognised experts in their field.

Whether it be a mini-hackathon for developers to investigate technical solutions to accessibility, a moderated group discussion to debate current or future trends in the field or a place for PhD students to share experiences and challenges, we invite you to actively contribute to the W4A conference program.

While topics and areas of interest can be suggested during the conference, we invite delegates to submit on-going projects and topics for discussion to be considered beforehand to enable us to maximise your benefit from these sessions. Please contact the General Chairs directly with suggestions ([e-mail]).

Time & Place

Location: Salle St Clair 4 – NIVEAU + 2

Date: Wednesday April 25, 11:30 am to 5.00pm (following the WWW Keynote)

Signup

Attendees who are registered for W4A are eligible to participate as part of their conference experience at no extra cost.