ASSETS 2008

Doctoral Consortium Papers

The Tenth International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers & Accessibility (ASSETS 2008) invites doctoral students to apply for participation in the Doctoral Consortium. This consortium is funded by National Science Foundation award IIS-0833962, and provides a great opportunity to doctoral students to share and discuss their research with other students, and a panel of established researchers. The ASSETS 2008 conference organizers express their deepest appreciation to the National Science Foundation for its support.

How the Consortium Will Work

The Consortium will be held on Sunday, October 12, 2008 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Twelve Doctoral students and four faculty members will attend. During the Consortium, each student will make a formal presentation about his or her doctoral research. Feedback will be given by each member of the faculty panel, as well as by the other student participants. Discussion will be encouraged.

The feedback will be geared toward helping student participants understand and articulate how their work is positioned, relative to other research on Assistive Technologies, Universal Accessibility, and Universal Usability. Feedback will also address whether their topics are adequately focused for thesis research projects, whether their methods are correctly chosen and applied, and whether their results are being appropriately analyzed and presented.

Student participants will also present their research in the main conference during a poster session that is dedicated specifically to the work of the Doctoral Consortium participants. This will allow conference attendees to interact with, and ask questions of, the Doctoral Consortium participants, and will allow the participants the opportunity to get feedback from a larger audience.

Goals of the Consortium

The overall goals of the Consortium are to:

• Provide a supportive setting for promising young researchers to give a short, critiqued research presentation, and then receive feedback from other student participants, and from established researchers in the field of Assistive Technologies, Universal Accessibility, and Universal Usability about their current research, as well as guidance on future research directions.
• Provide opportunities for the student participants to make contact with experts in the field, and to receive fresh perspectives and comments on their work from researchers outside their own institution - including both faculty and students.
• Enable the student participants to attend the ASSETS 2008 conference, to contribute to the conference goals through interaction with other researchers and conference events, to learn of potential career paths within academia and industry, and to gain access to an international network of researchers who can support their professional development.

The overall purpose of the Consortium is to encourage and prepare a group of promising young researchers dedicated to Assistive Technologies, Universal Accessibility, and Universal Usability.

Who Should Apply

The purpose of the Doctoral Consortium is to provide feedback to Doctoral candidates at an early stage of their research, in order to help guide and shape their research program. Students submitting proposals to the Doctoral Consortium may also submit a different piece of work to the Student Research Competition, but may not submit the same work to both the Doctoral Consortium and the Student Research Competition.

Note: Student work that is complete, or near to completion, should be submitted as either a technical paper or a poster.

Relevant Topics

Relevant topics for the Consortium include, but are not limited to:

• Designs for people with hearing impairments
• Designs for people with visual impairments
• Designs for people with motor impairments
• Designs for people with memory or cognitive disabilities
• Designs for older adults
• Designing for accessibility
• Evaluation of accessibility
• Web accessibility
• Cursor Control and Pointing Devices
• Input systems for individuals with motor impairment
• Navigational Assistance
• Personal Technologies
• Design for communication support
• Audio Interactions
• Computer systems to assist in teaching and learning
• Non-visual presentation of information

How to Apply

Each Doctoral Consortium application must contain the following materials:

1. Cover Letter: The cover letter should contain the following information:
• A statement of interest in participating in the Doctoral Consortium
• The full name of University and Department in which the candidate is earning his/her doctorate degree
• The name of the supervising professor
• Full contact information, including address, telephone number, fax number, and email address
• The title of the research, and keywords pertinent to the research
• The URL of the candidate's web page (if any)
2. Project Summary: The Research Summary must be two pages long in the ACM conference format including: title, author information, abstract, keywords, thesis research summary, and references. This extended abstract must clearly address:
• The problem that the proposed research is addressing.
• The motivation behind this research, including a broad comparison with the related literature.
• The proposed solution, including a brief description of the proposed methodology to the solution.
• The stage of the candidate’s program of study, including the status of the research (i.e. what has been done to date, and what still needs to be done).
• The envisioned contributions to the accessibility field.
• What the candidate hopes to gain from the Doctoral Consortium.
• Bibliographical references.
3. Letter of Recommendation: A letter from the primary thesis advisor/supervisor that briefly states what the advisor/supervisor expects the student to gain from, and contribute to the consortium.
4. The candidate's CV The candidate is required to submit a CV (maximum of 2 pages) that relates her/his background, relevant experience, and research accomplishments.

Submission Format: The Cover Letter, the Project Summary, the Letter of recommendation, and the candidate's CV should be submitted to the ASSETS 2008 Submission site as separate .pdf documents, in a single ZIP file by the deadline of 23 June 2008.

Student Participant Selection Process

The Doctoral Consortium applications will be evaluated based on the following criteria:

• The originality of work
• The importance of the work and potential impacts to the accessibility field
• The soundness and correctness of the proposed approach to address the problem

Doctoral Consortium Award

The best Doctoral Consortium contribution will be chosen by a panel of established researchers, based on the quality of both the research and the presentation given at the consortium. The winner will give a presentation during the closing plenary session of the ASSETS 2008 Conference to all of the conference delegates.

Publication

Following the Doctoral Consortium, the participants will be invited to submit revised and updated papers for publication in the January 2009 issue of the SIGACCESS Newsletter.

Sign Language Interpreters

Upon request, American Sign Language interpreters will be provided for the Doctoral Consortium, and all other ASSETS events. Requests for an interpreter must be indicated on the conference registration form when registering for ASSETS 2008.

Travel and Hotel Expenses - Disclaimer

The US National Science Foundation grant has provided funding to fully cover hotel, and (early) conference registration expenses for the Doctoral Consortium participants. Airfares expenses will also be covered for all participants, based on estimates made in early 2008. If airfares increase significantly during 2008, that funding might not be entirely adequate, and attendees might need to cover a portion of their airfare.

Important Dates

• Proposal submissions: June 23, 2008
• Notification of acceptance: July 7, 2008
• Camera-ready (for inclusion in a handout for Doctoral Consortium participants): August 4, 2008

Chairs

John Black

Arizona State University (USA)
Email: john.black@asu.edu

Giorgio Brajnik

University of Udine (Italy)
Email: giorgio@dimi.uniud.it

The Doctoral Consortium submission system is now open.