ASSETS 2008 News

Registration Is Now Open

noreply@blogger.com (Media Chair) — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 09:35:00 +0000

Delegates can now register for ASSETS 2008.

Prices for ASSETS 2008 are fixed in the local currency of Canadian Dollars (CAD). Up to date conversions can be found online at: http://www.xe.com.

Please note that the deadline for Early Registration is 4th August 2008.

Registration Fees
Delegate Type	Early Registration	Regular Registration
ACM Member	$450 (CAD)	$550 (CAD)
Non-ACM Member	$550 (CAD)	$650 (CAD)
Student	$300 (CAD)	$350 (CAD)

Tenth International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2008)

noreply@blogger.com (Media Chair) — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 10:08:00 +0000

October 13-15, 2008
Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
www.acm.org/sigaccess/assets08/

CALL FOR PAPERS

The ASSETS series of conferences explores the potential for Computer and Information Technologies to enhance the lives of individuals with disabilities and those around them. ASSETS is the premier forum for presenting innovative research on the design and use of both mainstream and specialized assistive technologies to support people with disabilities. Since 1994, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and its SIGACCESS Special Interest Group on Accessible Computing has sponsored the ASSETS series of conferences. This year's conference includes formal paper sessions, demonstrations, posters, a doctoral consortium, and a student research competition. The single track and friendly atmosphere make ASSETS the ideal venue to meet researchers, practitioners, developers and policy-makers to exchange ideas, share information, and make new contacts.

Topics

High quality, original submissions on topics relevant to computers and accessibility are invited. This includes the use of technology by and in support of:

individuals with hearing, sight and other sensory impairments,
individuals with motor impairments,
individuals with memory, learning and cognitive impairments,
individuals with multiple impairments,
older adults

Submissions should present novel ideas, designs, techniques, systems, tools, evaluations, scientific investigations, methodologies, social issues or policy issues relating to:

assistive technologies that improve day-to-day life
assistive technologies that improve access to mainstream Computer and Information Technologies
innovative use of mainstream technologies to overcome access barriers
accessibility and usability of mainstream technologies
identification of barriers to technology access that are not addressed by existing research

Where relevant, work that includes empirical data from the target user group is strongly preferred.

Submission Procedures

ASSETS accepts submissions in the following categories:

Technical papers
Posters
Demonstrations
Student research competition
Doctoral consortium

All submissions will be peer-reviewed by an international panel. Submissions MUST contain substantial original, unpublished material.

Important Dates

Important Dates For ASSETS 2008
Paper	Date
Technical Paper submissions	05 May 2008
Technical Reviews Complete	30 May 2008
Optional Author Rebuttal Open	02 Jun 2008
Optional Author Rebuttal Close	06 Jun 2008
Technical Rebuttal Responses	13 Jun 2008
Acceptance notification for technical papers	16 Jun 2008
Poster, and demonstrations submissions	23 June 2008
Student Research Competition Submissions	23 June 2008
Doctoral Consortium submissions	23 June 2008
Acceptance notification for other papers	07 Jul 2008
Camera-ready all venues	04 Aug 2008
Doctoral Consortium	12 Oct 2008
ASSETS Conference	13 Oct 2008

Mentors

Looking for help with your poster, demo, doctoral consortium submission, or student research competition submission? Help with submissions by seasoned researchers is available through the ASSETS Mentoring Program. Mentors will be experienced ASSETS contributors, who can help authors to improve their submissions. If you think you would benefit from mentoring either because you are new to presenting your research, new to the type of category you are interested in submitting to or simply find that preparing English language papers foreign to your paper writing experience, please consider applying for mentoring help. See the mentor program page for more information.

Important Mentoring Dates For ASSETS 2008
Paper	Date
Technical Paper (8 pages): 2-3 Page Research Description	Jan 07, 2008
Rough Draft of Submission	Feb 04, 2008
Pre-mentoring Submission	Mar 03, 2008
Other Papers (2 pages): Rough Draft of Submission	Mar 24, 2008
Pre-mentoring Submission	Apr 21, 2008
Other Papers (2 pages): Rough Draft of Submission	Mar 24, 2008

CFP: SRC + Requesting a Mentor

noreply@blogger.com (Anna C. Cavender) — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 18:54:00 +0000

The ASSETS series of conferences is aimed at providing a technical forum for presenting and disseminating innovative research results that address the use of computing and information technologies to help persons with disabilities. This email contains information about the third annual SIGACCESS Student Research Competition and requesting mentors through the SIGACCESS Mentor Programme.

STUDENT RESEARCH COMPETITION

Students working on computing and information technology to help persons with disabilities are invited to enter the third annual SIGACCESS Student Research Competition. This is an exciting opportunity for students to participate in an ACM conference and get visibility for their research. Students wishing to participate submit abstracts of their work, and up to 25 entrants will be selected for the competition. Qualifying research must deal with issues related to computing and information technology to help persons with disabilities. Selected students will receive partial support from ACM to attend the conference. At the conference, entrants will display a poster and make a brief presentation to a panel of judges. A small number of semifinalists will be chosen by the judges to present their work in a conference session, and of those up to three undergraduate and three graduate students will be designated finalists by the judges, and entered in the Grand Finals of ACM's Student Research Competition.

Eligibility

Entrants must be undergraduate or graduate students, and members of ACM. Entrants must be sole authors of their abstracts and posters. Work accepted as a full paper for one of the technical sessions of the conference cannot also be considered for the Student Research Competition. Students having a technical paper, however, are encouraged to submit other research to the Student Research Competition. Please note that the judges will look more favourably on complete, or nearly complete, work than research which is still in its early formative stages. Students at, or near, the outset of their work in this area are encouraged to submit to the Doctoral Consortium instead. The deadline for the 2-page abstracts is Monday 23 June 2008 (Midnight HST) See the student research competition web page at http://www.sigaccess.org/assets08/submission/src.php for more information and the submission system, which will be open shortly.

REQUESTING A MENTOR

Help with submissions by seasoned researchers is available through the ASSETS Mentoring Program. Mentors are experienced prior ASSETS program committee members who have themselves published in the ASSETS technical paper program. They may help with any of the following:

deciding whether the ASSETS conference is an appropriate venue for your work
deciding whether your work should be submitted as a paper, poster or demo
identifying relevant previous research
planning an appropriate research methodology
structuring a technical paper submission
identifying any weaker aspects of a submission and suggesting ways to improve those areas

Important deadlines for requesting a mentor: Technical Paper (8 pages):
Monday 07 January 2008 (Midnight HST) -> 2-3 Page Research Description
Monday 04 February 2008 (Midnight HST) -> Rough Draft of Submission
Monday 03 March 2008 (Midnight HST) -> Completed Submission (Pre-mentoring)
Monday 05 May 2008 (Midnight HST) -> Conference Submission

Other Papers (2 pages):
Monday 24 March 2008 (Midnight HST) -> Rough Draft of Submission
Monday 21 April 2008 (Midnight HST) -> Completed Submission (Pre-mentoring)
Monday 23 May 2008 (Midnight HST) -> Conference Submission

See the mentor programme web page at http://www.sigaccess.org/assets08/submission/mentors.php for more information and an application form.

Submitting Papers To ASSETS

noreply@blogger.com (Media Chair) — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 11:14:00 +0000

The ASSETS Conference is developed with the specific focus of facilitating sharing of information, exchange of ideas, through formal paper sessions, demonstrations, posters, and student research/doctoral consortium sessions. To this purpose, ASSETS is a single track conference to encourage group participation and interactions. The matrix below shows who is eligible for submission to each session and where those submissions will be published.

Important Submission Information
Paper Category	Applicant	PhD First Half	PhD Second Half	Mentoring Available	Published In	Lodged In
Technical	Anybody	Yes	Yes	Yes	Proceedings	ACM Digital Library
Posters & Demonstrations	Anybody	Yes Greyed Out	Yes Greyed Out	Yes	Proceedings	ACM Digital Library
Doctoral Consortium	Students	Yes Greyed Out	No Greyed Out	Yes	Newsletter	ACM Digital Library
Student Research Competition	Students	No Greyed Out	Yes Greyed Out	Yes	Proceedings	ACM Digital Library

Key:

Submission to a session that is greyed out excludes submission to another.

Mentoring Programme

noreply@blogger.com (Media Chair) — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 11:28:00 +0000

Help with submissions by seasoned researchers is available through the ASSETS Mentoring Program. Applicants may receive advice on their submission in any of the submission categories provided by ASSETS. Although we do not guarantee that your submission will be accepted by ASSETS, most individuals who have used the mentoring service at ASSETS or at the CHI conference where it began have reported positive experiences and an improved understanding of what is required by reviewers.

If you think you would benefit from mentoring either because you are new to presenting your research, new to the type of category you are interested in submitting to or simply find that preparing English language papers foreign to your paper writing experience, please consider applying for mentoring help. For more information, and to apply to the mentoring programme, please see the ASSETS Mentor Programme Page.

ASSETS 2008 Author's Rebuttal Procedure

noreply@blogger.com (Darren Lunn) — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 17:32:00 +0000

As preparations for ASSETS 2008 continue, the general conference Chair, Dr. Simon Harper and SIGACCESS Chair, Vicky Hanson, have decided to propose to enhance the reviewing process by allowing an optional author's rebuttal to the initial set of reviewers' comments.

It is hoped that this extra step in the process might help resolve instances in which simple clarifications to ambiguities or minor omissions in the submissions, raised by the reviewers, could project some of the papers in their full worth.

The process should help in reducing the instances in which minor details or communication imprecision prevent worthwhile research endeavours from being assessed in their full impact. Furthermore, the added effort implicit in the rebuttal stage should be minimised by performing the reviewing process on a submission/reviewing system that fully supports this stage.

For full details, please see the Author's Rebuttal Prceducre pages.

Welcome to the ASSETS 2008 Website

noreply@blogger.com (Darren Lunn) — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 23:05:00 +0000

Welcome to the new ASSETS 2008 website. The website is now complete and has a News facility which is available from the home page. News items will be regularly updated on this page, so please remember to check on a regular basis. Alternatively you can subscribe to our RSS feed and have new items sent to you as they occur. We hope you find the website user friendly and easy to navigate. If you would like to make any comments about the site or suggest information that you would like to see available here, please contact the ASSETS 2008 Media Chair.