SIGACCESS News

Volume 2, Issue 3 (March 2010) of TACCESS Available Online

noreply@blogger.com (Information Director) — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 15:32:00 +0000

Volume 2, Issue 3 of ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing is now available. This issue includes two articles. The first explores the design of auditory graphs while the second addresses computer use by children with Down Syndrome and is now available in the ACM Digital Library.

Universal Design of Auditory Graphs: A Comparison of Sonification Mappings for Visually Impaired and Sighted Listeners
B. N. Walker and L. M. Mauney
Computer Usage by Children with Down Syndrome: Challenges and Future Research
Jinjuan Feng, Jonathan Lazar, Libby Kumin and Ant Ozok

Google Europe Scholarship for Students with Disabilities

noreply@blogger.com (Information Director) — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 10:56:00 +0000

Google is excited to announce the most recent addition to their scholarship programs in Europe, the Google Europe Scholarship for Students with Disabilities. This scholarship is designed for students with disabilities studying Computer Science or Computer Engineering who have shown academic strength and demonstrated a passion for computer science.

Deadline:: 15th March 2010
Website:: http://www.google.com/studentswithdisabilities-europe/

ASSETS 2010 Mentor Program

noreply@blogger.com (Information Director) — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 10:45:00 +0000

We are looking for experienced authors to help us with mentoring individuals new to the ASSETS conference. If you have published in ASSETS or similar venues, we encourage you to volunteer to be a mentor. If you are interested, please email the Mentor Chair (mc-assets10@acm.org) with your name, affiliation, and up to 4 keywords that represent your research areas by March 7th, 2010.

Mentoring Request

Help with submissions by seasoned researchers is available through the ASSETS Mentoring Program. You may receive advice on your 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 by emailing the Mentor Chair (mc-assets10@acm.org) a 1 page extended abstract of your paper. The deadline for mentoring request is March 5th, 2010. A mentor will be assigned to you shortly. You will then need to send your submission to the mentor assigned to you and work with this person through email, voice over IP, etc.

Deadline to request a Mentor:: March 5th, 2010
Deadline to volunteer as a Mentor:: March 7th, 2010
Website:: http://www.sigaccess.org/assets10/mentor.html

January 2010 SIGACCESS Newsletter Now Available

noreply@blogger.com (Information Director) — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 10:39:00 +0000

The January 2010 edition of the SIGACCESS Newsletter is now available online from the SIGACCESS Newsletter pages.

A Note from the Editor
Sri Kurniawan and Jinjuan Heidi Feng
Persuasive Mobile Exercise Companion for Teenagers with Weight Management Issues
Sonia Arteaga
Widget Identification and Modification for Web 2.0 Access Technologies (WIMWAT)
Alex Q. Chen
Sign Language Synthesis: Skeleton Modelling for More Realistic Gestures
Maxime Delorme
AudioNav: A Mixed Reality Navigation System for Individuals Who Are Visually Impaired
Navid Fallah
Using Interactive Objects for Speech Intervention
Foad Hamidi
Assistive Systems for Children with Dyslexia and Autism
Harini Sampath, Jayanthi Sivaswamy, and Bipin Indurkhya
MobileAccessibility: Camera Focalization for Blind and Low- Vision Users On the Go
Chandrika Jayant
Modeling Animations of American Sign Language Verbs through Motion-Capture of Native ASL Signers
Pengfei Lu
An Online Multimedia Language Assistant for People with Aphasia and Other Language Barriers
Xiaojuan Ma
Haptic/Audio Based Exergaming for Visually Impaired Individuals
Anthony Morelli
Improving Vocabulary Organization in Assistive Communication Tools: A Mixed-Initiative Approach
Sonya Nikolova
ASSETS 2010: The 12th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility

ASSETS 2010 Facebook Page

noreply@blogger.com (Information Director) — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 12:22:00 +0000

We are very pleased to announce the launch of an ASSETS Conference page on Facebook.

This page will be another venue for past and future ASSETS Conference attendees to share information, get announcements about upcoming conferences, finding and stay connected to colleagues they meet at the ASSETS year to year. In addition, videos and photos of conferences can be posted, to allow us to share links, videos, pictures, and other media from conferences! This Facebook page will be updated with information about each upcoming ASSETS Conference.

The new ASSETS Conference Facebook page is open to anyone who has a Facebook account. Any member will be able to post to the online discussion list, share media and links.

ASSETS 2010 Call For Papers

noreply@blogger.com (Information Director) — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 12:59:00 +0000

The 12th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility, 25-27 October 2010, Orlando, Florida, USA.

People with disabilities can use Computer and Information Technologies to overcome barriers encountered in day-to-day life, and to participate more fully in society.

The ASSETS series of conferences explores the potential of Computer and Information Technologies to support and include 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 by people with disabilities. Sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and its SIGACCESS Special Interest Group on Accessible Computing, ASSETS 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 policymakers to exchange ideas, share information, and make new contacts.

Topics

High quality, original submissions on topics relevant to computers and accessibility are invited. Appropriate topics include (but are not limited to) 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

Successful submissions typically present (though submissions from other related areas are encouraged) novel ideas, designs, techniques, systems, 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 groups is strongly preferred.

Important Dates

Paper Submission:: 7th May 2010
Posters, Demos, Doctoral Consortium and Student Research Competition:: 2nd July 2010
URL:: http://www.sigaccess.org/assets10/

Second ACM SIGACCESS Award for Outstanding Contributions to Computing and Accessibility - Call for Nominations

noreply@blogger.com (Information Director) — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 10:39:00 +0000

We are pleased to request nominations for the ACM SIGACCESS Award for Outstanding Contributions to Computing and Accessibility. The award recognizes individuals who have made significant and lasting contributions to the development of computing technologies which improve the accessibility of media and services to people with disabilities. Outstanding contributions through research, practice, or advocacy will be recognized. Towards this goal, contributions will be considered from academia, industry, as well as other professions that focus on computer users with disabilities and the application of computing technology to improve access. The award will recognize members of the community for long-term accomplishments or those who have made a notable impact through a significant innovation.

Candidates’ contributions can include innovative ideas, influence in the community, and/or the social impact of their work.

The award includes a $1000 honorarium, an award certificate of recognition, and an invitation for the recipient to present a keynote talk at the ASSETS 2010 Conference in Orlando, Florida, USA (25-27 October 2010). A public citation for the award will be placed on the SIGACCESS website.

Nomination Procedure

A nomination for the award should include:

A statement summarizing the candidate's accomplishments, description of the significance of the work, and justification of the nomination (two pages maximum)
Curriculum vitae of the nominee;
Three endorsement letters supporting the nomination including the significant contributions of the candidate. Each endorsement should be no more than 300 words;
A concise statement (one sentence) of the achievement(s) for which the award is being given. This statement will appear on the award certificate and on the website.

Nominations should be sent either:

Electronically:: Gerhard Weber gerhard.weber -AT- tu-dresden.de
Hardcopy:: Gerhard Weber,
ACM SIGACCESS Award Chair
Department of Computer Science
TU Dresden
Noethnizer Str. 46
01602 Dresden,
Germany

We kindly request that nominations meet the following conditions:

The nominee can be any member of the scientific community.
The nominator must be a SIGACCESS member.
No self-nomination is allowed.
Current members of the SIGACCESS Executive Committee as well as members of the Awards Committee are not eligible.

Important Dates

Submission of Nominations:: 31st March 2010
Notification of Selection:: 1st June 2010

Selection Committee

Julio Abascal: University of the Basque Country, Spain
Enrico Pontelli: New Mexico State University, USA
Gerhard Weber (Chair): TU Dresden, Germany

W4A 2010 Fourth Web Accessibility Challenge Call for Submissions

noreply@blogger.com (Information Director) — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 10:39:00 +0000

The Fourth Web Accessibility Challenge in conjunction with the W4A 2010 Conference will take place at the WWW 2010 conference in April 26 and 27 in Raleigh, NC.

Goal

The Web Accessibility Challenge is organised to give an opportunity to researchers and developers of advanced Web accessibility technologies for showcasing their technologies to technical leaders in this area not only from academia and industry but also from end-users. 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 the most significant advance in research technology in accessibility for that year.

Topic

Please note that submissions can be related to the theme, “Developing Regions: Common Goals, Common Problems?” 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)
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 (cc2010@w4a.info).

Important Dates

Submission deadline is 19th February 2010 (Midnight Hawaii Standard Time).

W4A Google Student Awards

noreply@blogger.com (Information Director) — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 10:43:00 +0000

We are delighted to announce the W4A Google Student Awards, which will enable two students to attend this year’s W4A in Raleigh, NC, USA.

Thanks to financial support from Google, these Awards will provide financial support towards travel and accommodation, plus free conference registration, to two students conducting postgraduate research in the web accessibility field and who otherwise would be unable to attend W4A.

This award is open to any student in a postgraduate position (part time or full time) at a University or other Higher Education institution, AND who is carrying out research that is directly relevant to the field of web accessibility. We particularly encourage applicants from under-represented parts of the world.

We now invite submissions from interested students - the deadline is Thursday 4th February, midnight Hawaii Standard Time.

Please see the Google Student Awards page for more information including details of the submission procedure.

AAAS Problem Solvers Workshop on Engineers with Disabilities

noreply@blogger.com (Information Director) — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 09:45:00 +0000

The AAAS is hosting the Problem Solvers Workshop on Engineers with Disabilities on the13th, 14th, and 15th December 2009. This is an exciting workshop on engineers and engineering students with disabilities at AAAS, starting this Sunday at 4pm. A link to the agenda can be found at http://tiny.cc/x6oLB

Participants will be an extraordinary group of engineers and scientists with all types of disabilities, outstanding speakers, as well as advocates who want to broaden the participation of people with disabilities in STEM fields. At this date they would not require registration. Attendees who could attend all or part could simply let them know by email, so they have a count.

AAAS can be contacted at:

Postal:: Virginia W. Stern, Director
Project on Science, Technology and Disability,
ENTRY POINT! and ACCESS
American Association for the Advancement of Science
1200 New York Ave, NW
Washington, DC 20005
Phone:: +1 202-326-6672 (v/tdd)
Fax:: +1 202-371-9849
Email:: vstern@aaas.org

AccessComputing Alliance Has Funding for Undergraduate Research Internships

noreply@blogger.com (Information Director) — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 09:49:00 +0000

The AccessComputing Alliance has funding for undergraduate research internships for students with disabilities. The internships are available for US citizens and permanent residents and cover a summer stipend, travel, housing, and sustenance.

If you have a student at your university you would like to work with or you are interested in bringing a student from another university to work with you, both are possible.

If you are interested please contact me as soon as possible. Funding is limited, so please contact me as soon as possible.

Richard Ladner
Boeing Professor in Computer Science and Engineering
University of Washingtion
AccessComputing Alliance
http://www.washington.edu/accesscomputing/

We welcome applications for the SIGACCESS Scholarship in Computers and Accessibility

noreply@blogger.com (Information Director) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 15:32:00 +0000

The SIGACCESS Scholarship Award aims to provide support for practitioners, researchers, members of advocacy groups, and individuals with disabilities who are interested in the field of computers and accessibility, to actively participate in the ASSETS conference and gain experience and knowledge from interacting with experts in the field. The scholarship award is in the amount of $2,000. SIGACCESS will award up to two scholarships per year, pending availability of funds.

The deadline for application is May 31st, 2010; applicants will be notified of the decision by July 15th, 2010. Applications should be sent in electronic form to: chair_sigaccess@acm.org. For further details on Eligibility Criteria and Application Requirements please see:
The SIGACCESS Scholarship in Computers and Accessibility Award Pages.

Special Note: the 2010 SIGACCESS scholarship will be dedicated to the memory of Dr. Noëlle Carbonell, a leader in the field of accessibility and a strong advocate and supporter of SIGACCESS.

September 2009 SIGACCESS Newsletter Now Available

noreply@blogger.com (Information Director) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 10:04:00 +0000

The September 2009 edition of the SIGACCESS Newsletter is now available online from the SIGACCESS Newsletter pages.

A Note from the Editors
Adam J Sporka and Sri Kurniawan
MyLexics: An Assistive Courseware for Dyslexic Children to Learn Basic Malay Language
Muhammad Haziq Lim Abdullah, Syariffanor Hisham, and Shahril Parumo
Designing Smart Home Interfaces for the Elderly
Zoraida Callejas, Ramón López-Cózar
Development Framework for Pervasive Computing Applications
Václav Slovácek, Miroslav Macík, Martin Klíma

ASSETS 2009 Student Research Competition Winners

noreply@blogger.com (Information Director) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 14:47:00 +0000

This year's ASSETS Conference hosted its fourth Microsoft Student Research Competition (SRC) event. The SRC allows students from diverse ACM areas to present their work and get recognised for achievement. The competition had both Undergraduate and Graduate categories, with the following students winning in their respective categories.

Undergraduate Category

Sensation Augmentation to Relieve Pressure Sore Formation in Wheelchair Users
Raphael Rush, Queen's University, Canada
Designing AAC Interfaces for Commercial Brain-Computer Interaction Gaming Hardware
Stephen Steward, The University of Delaware, USA

Graduate Category

iSET: Enabling in Situ and Post Hoc Video Labeling
Mish Madsen, MIT, USA; Abdelrahman Mahmoud, American University in Cairo, Egypt; Youssef Kashef, American University in Cairo, Egypt
Defining Virtualization Based System Abstractions for an Indoor Assistive Living for Elderly Care
Nova Ahmed, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
MGuider: Mobile Guiding and Tracking System in Public Transit System for Individuals with Cognitive Impairments
Wei-Hsun Chen, Chung Yuan Christian University, Taiwan

SIGACCESS Best Paper Award 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Information Director) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 10:02:00 +0000

The 2009 SIGACCESS Best Paper Award has been awarded Hironobu Takagi, Shinya Kawanaka, Masatomo Kobayashi, Daisuke Sato and Chieko Asakawa from IBM Research, Yamato, Japan for their paper:

Collaborative Web Accessibility Improvement: Challenges and Possibilities

Collaborative accessibility improvement has great potential to make the Web more adaptive in a timely manner by inviting users into the improvement process. The Social Accessibility Project is an experimental service for a new needs-driven improvement model based on collaborative metadata authoring technologies. In 10 months, about 18,000 pieces of metadata were created for 2,930 webpages through collaboration. We encountered many challenges as we sought to create a new mainstream approach. The productivity of the volunteer activities exceeded our expectation, but we found large and important problems in the screen reader users' lack of awareness of their own accessibility problems. In this paper, we first introduce examples, analyze some statistics from the pilot service and then discuss our findings and challenges. Three future directions including site-wide authoring are considered.

Full Paper Available from the ACM Digital Library

SIGACCESS Best Student Paper Award 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Information Director) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 09:53:00 +0000

The 2009 SIGACCESS Best Student Paper Award has been awarded to Anna C. Cavender from the University of Washington, USA, for her contribution to the paper “ClassInFocus: Enabling Improved Visual Attention Strategies for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students”. This was written in conjunction with Jeffrey P. Bigham from the University of Rochester, New York, USA and Richard E. Ladner from the University of Washington, USA.

ClassInFocus: Enabling Improved Visual Attention Strategies for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students

Deaf and hard of hearing students must juggle their visual attention in current classroom settings. Managing many visual sources of information (instructor, interpreter or captions, slides or whiteboard, classmates, and personal notes) can be a challenge. ClassInFocus automatically notifies students of classroom changes, such as slide changes or new speakers, helping them employ more beneficial observing strategies. A user study of notification techniques shows that students who liked the notifications were more likely to visually utilize them to improve performance.

Full Paper Available from the ACM Digital Library

ACM-BCS Visions of Computer Science 2010

noreply@blogger.com (Information Director) — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 08:41:00 +0000

Edinburgh University, UK, 13-16 April 2010

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and British Computer Society (BCS) are delighted to invite you to the joint ACM-BCS 2010 “Visions of Computer Science” conference, to be held at the Informatics Forum, Edinburgh University, between April 13-16 2010. This flagship event aims to energise the computing community and bring it together around some positive and inspiring visions of our discipline and follows the highly successful "Visions of Computer Science" conference in 2008.

Topics

The proceedings will be published on the BCS electronic proceedings series and the ACM Digital Library. Some of the best papers will appear in The Computer Journal, the archival research publication of the BCS. Submissions are being solicited in all areas of research covering the broad field of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE). They include but are not limited to:

Computer Architectures and Digital Systems
Theoretical Computer Science: Algorithms and Complexity
Logic and Semantics
Non-standard Models of Computation
Programming Methods and Languages
Software Engineering, and System Design Tools
Quantitative Evaluation of Algorithms, Systems, and Networks
Artificial Intelligence, Agents, and Machine Learning
Computer Networks
Distributed and Pervasive Systems
Grid Computing and eScience
Digital Economy
Databases, Information Retrieval and Data Mining, Web based Computation
Human Computer Interaction
Robotics and Computer Vision
Bioinformatics, Synthetic Biology and Synthetic Chemistry
Medical Applications

Call for Papers

Submissions are being solicited in all areas of research covering the broad field of Computer Science and Engineering. The relevant dates for authors are:

submission:: 18 December 2009
notification:: 19 February 2010
camera-ready:: 5 March 2010

The strict limit for submissions is 12 A4-pages in 10pt two-column style including figures and references. Authors may include a clearly marked appendix, which referees may or may not take into account. For more information see:
http://www.bcs.org/visions2010/.

The Seventh International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A 2010)

noreply@blogger.com (Information Director) — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 11:36:00 +0000

Co-Located with the Nineteenth International World Wide Web Conference (WWW2010), in Raleigh, North Carolina, USA, 26-27 April 2010.

Developing Regions: Common Goals, Common Problems?

A revolution in the information society is now starting, based on the use of mobile phones in developing countries. The hyper-growth of mobile phone penetration is deeply changing the lives of people in most of the world; their ways of communicating, working, learning, and structuring their societies. The promising next step is obviously to access the Web. The Web has already touched the lives of over a billion people and now is the time for the next billions.

However, this expansion faces unprecedented accessibility challenges. Even the word “accessibility” needs a new definition for people in the developing regions. How can someone who is illiterate or barely literate access the Web? In some cases, a language may not even have a written form. The affordability of the technology is also a challenge, while access is constrained by low computational power, limited bandwidth, compact keyboards, tiny screens, and even by the lack of electric power. All of these constraints compound the problems of access and inclusion.

The desire for access in developing regions and the resourcefulness of the people who want inclusion unite the communities of people in developing regions and the communities of disabled people in the developed world. Will complex and highly graphical interfaces exclude developing regions from access? What problems exist, what are the newly appearing problems, and what solutions are required? How do the adoption patterns for Web accessibility and inclusion vary across cultures? What effect will the Web in the developing regions have on accessibility in the developed regions and vice versa?

Note that while the commonalities between Web Accessibility and Developing Regions are this years theme, please don’t be deterred if this somewhat unique area is not yours. We would like to see all quality work on Web Accessibility regardless of the particular field within accessibility. The overriding reason for a paper being accepted is its high quality in relation to the broad area of Web Accessibility. In this case topics of interests include (but are not limited to):

Inclusion and Citizen Empowerment in Developing Regions;
Inclusion and Literacy in Developing Regions;
Enhancing Education in Developing Regions;
Accessibility Problems in Developing Regions;
Web Based Employment in Developing Regions;
Web Based Health Care in Developing Regions;
Evaluation and Validation tools and techniques;
User Experimentation looking at Social Networking and Freedom of Expression;
User Agents for Developing Regions and User Agent Guidelines;
Web Authoring Guidelines;
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; and
Accessible graphic formats and tools for their creation.

Web Accessibility Challenge

Sponsored by Microsoft since 2008, the “Web Accessibility Challenge” is organised to give an opportunity to researchers and developers of advanced Web accessibility technologies for showcasing their technologies to technical leaders in this area not only from academia and industry but also from end-users. More details:
http://www.w4a.info/2010/submissions/challenge.shtml.

Submission

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. Submission details are available at:
http://www.w4a.info/2010/submissions/index.shtml.

Important Dates

Technical and Communication Papers:: Submission: 01 February 2010 (Midnight Hawaii Standard Time)
Web Accessibility Challenge:: Submission: 19 February 2010 (Midnight Hawaii Standard Time)
More details:: http://www.w4a.info/2010/submissions/dates.shtml

Online Course on Designing Accessible Web Forms

noreply@blogger.com (Information Director) — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 08:47:00 +0000

Creating web forms that are accessible to people with disabilities requires understanding of the labelling features of HTML markup and how browsers interpret labelling markup for assistive technologies like screen readers. The course will start by using simulations to help participants understand the issues people with disabilities face when using the web. Participants will learn the basics of labelling form controls, how to indicate required controls and provide feedback on invalid responses in a way that is usable by people with disabilities. Examples of more complex labelling of form controls for dates, phone numbers, validation codes and high density surveys will be included in the course. Participants will learn CSS techniques to layout form controls without using tables and how to highlight the active form control using CSS pseudo elements. The last part of the course will provide a preview of the form labelling capabilities of the new Accessibility Rich Internet Applications! (ARIA) specifications which provide new capabilities to label form controls and provide accessible feedback on form validation as required by the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0.

Who Should Participate in the Course?

This course is designed for web developers interested in learning about the disability access issues faced by people with disabilities in using the web and how web forms can be designed to be accessible to people with disabilities. Participants should be familiar with HTML coding and the form elements. Knowledge of basic CSS techniques and javascripting will be helpful, but not a required part of the course.

Dates and Registration

Dates:: October 27th to December 1st (5 weeks)
Location:: On-line, mostly synchronous and some asynchronous activities
Cost:: $175 (NOTE: $25 discount to WOW members, educators, and government employees)
More information at:: http://formsonline.cita.illinois.edu/
Instructor:: Jon Gunderson, Ph.D., University of Illinois
Registration link:: http://www.webprotraining.org/AccessibleForms.html

Information Systems Department at UMBC Invites Applications for a Tenure-Track Faculty Position in the Area of Human-Centered Computing

noreply@blogger.com (Information Director) — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 10:58:00 +0000

The Information Systems Department at UMBC invites applications for a tenure-track faculty position at the Assistant Professor level in the area of human-centered computing (HCC) starting August 2010. Outstanding candidates in other areas will also be considered.

Candidates must have an earned PhD in Information Systems or a related field no later than August 2010. Applicants engaged in interdisciplinary research addressing accessibility (broadly defined to include issues associated with disabilities, age, culture, and other relevant topics), human-information interaction, or social computing are of primary interest. Ideal candidates will be engaged in research that spans two or more of these areas with preference given to those who can collaborate with current faculty. Candidates should have a strong potential for excellence in research, the ability to develop and sustain an externally funded research program, and the ability to contribute to our graduate and undergraduate teaching mission.

The Department offers undergraduate degrees in Information Systems and Business Technology Administration as well as both the MS and PhD in Information Systems. In addition, the Department offers an MS and PhD in Human-Centered Computing, and was ranked 8th in the nation in 2007 for scholarly productivity by Academic Analytics. Consistent with the UMBC vision, the Department has excellent technical support and teaching facilities as well as outstanding laboratory space and state of the art technology. UMBC’s Technology Center, Research Park, and Center for Entrepreneurship are major indicators of active research and outreach. Further details on our research, academic programs, and faculty can be found at http://www.is.umbc.edu/. Under-represented groups including women and minorities are especially encouraged to apply.

Applications will not be reviewed until the following materials are received: a cover letter, a one-page statement of teaching interests, a one-page statement of research interests, one or more sample research papers, and a curriculum vitae. Applicants should also arrange to have three letters of recommendation sent to the department as soon as possible. Electronic submission of materials as PDF documents is preferred. Electronic copies should be sent to bmorris@umbc.edu. Copies can also be sent to: Dr. Andrew Sears, Chair of Faculty Search Committee, Information Systems Department, UMBC, 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250-5398. For inquiries, please contact Barbara Morris at (410) 455-3795 or bmorris@umbc.edu.

Review of applications will begin immediately and will continue until the position is filled. This position is subject to the availability of funds.

UMBC is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer and welcomes applications from minorities, women and individuals with disabilities.

Call for Submissions to a Special Issue of ACM Transactions on Computing Education on Broadening Participation

noreply@blogger.com (Information Director) — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 09:13:00 +0000

A key issue in computing education at all levels is increasing the participation of members from the underrepresented groups (women, Native Americans, African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and those with disabilities) in computing. In this special issue of TOCE the editors seek high quality scholarly papers that explore the problem of under representation from an education point of view. Papers may be expository helping readers understand the causes of under representation or may describe educational practices that have improved the participation and success of underrepresented groups.

Papers are welcomed from a broad range of perspectives. But a preliminary one page abstract of the paper should be sent to the Special Issue editors by October 31, 2009 to help the editors know what range of topics will be coming in. A number of papers will be solicited to make sure that the Special Issue covers a wide range of topics.

The deadline for submission to the Special Issue is February 1, 2010. Full papers, solicited or not, should be submitted via Manuscript Central (http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/toce) and will be refereed according to the normal TOCE review criteria (see http://toce.acm.org/authors.html). In the submission cover letter, please indicate that the paper is for the Broadening Participation special issue.

Special Issue editors:

Richard Ladner: University of Washington, ladner@cs.washington.edu
Tammy VanDeGrift: University of Portland, vandegri@up.edu

June 2009 SIGACCESS Newsletter Now Available

noreply@blogger.com (Information Director) — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 09:10:00 +0000

The June 2009 edition of the SIGACCESS Newsletter is now available online from the SIGACCESS Newsletter pages.

A Note from the Editor
Sri Kurniawan
Web Toolkits Accessibility Study
Zdenek Mikovec, Jan Vystrcil and Pavel Slavík
Pitch in Non-verbal Vocal Input
Adam J. Sporka
Combating Obesity Trends in Teenagers through Persuasive Mobile Technology
Sonia M. Arteaga, Mo Kudeki, and Adrienne Woodworth
CFP: Eleventh International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility

ACM Student Research Competition First Place!

noreply@blogger.com (Information Director) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 11:05:00 +0000

In May we announced that Xu Liu from the University of Maryland was one of the three winners in this year’s ACM / Microsoft Student Research Competition (SRC) for his paper on “Mobile Currency Reader for People with Visual Impairments”.

At the ACM Awards banquet this past Saturday, it was announced that he won First Place in the graduate student division. Congratulations Xu!

This is the second time in the past few years that a student from the ASSETS Conference SRC has won 1st place. This reflects very well on the quality of entries we get at the conference. We look forward to seeing more outstanding entries at ASSETS’09 in October.

For information about how students can enter the SRC at the upcoming ASSETS conference, see:
http://www.sigaccess.org/assets09/information/student-research-competition.php

SIGACCESS Election Results

noreply@blogger.com (Information Director) — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 18:40:00 +0000

We are pleased to announce that the results of the SIGACCESS Election for the coming term, July 1, 2009 - June 30, 2012, are:

Chair:: Andrew Sears
Vice Chair:: Enrico Pontelli
Secretary/Treasurer:: Shari Trewin

We thank all of you who participated in the election and we know that the new officers will serve SIGACCESS well.

Volume 2 , Issue 2 (June 2009) of TACCESS Available Online

noreply@blogger.com (Information Director) — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 08:59:00 +0000

Volume 2, Issue 2 of ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing is now available. This edition is a Special Issue from the ASSETS 2008 Conference and can be accessed in the ACM Digital Library.

Guest Editorial
Armando Barreto and Torsten Felzer
A3: HCI Coding Guideline for Research Using Video Annotation to Assess Behavior of Nonverbal Subjects with Computer-Based Intervention
Joshua Hailpern, Karrie Karahalios, James Halle, Laura Dethorne and Mary-Kelsey Coletto
A Linguistically Motivated Model for Speed and Pausing in Animations of American Sign Language
Matt Huenerfauth
The Development and Evaluation of Performance-Based Functional Assessment: A Methodology for the Measurement of Physical Capabilities
Kathleen J. Price and Andrew Sears
Exploring Visual and Motor Accessibility in Navigating a Virtual World
Shari Trewin, Mark Laff, Vicki Hanson and Anna Cavender

SIGACCESS News

Volume 2, Issue 3 (March 2010) of TACCESS Available Online

Table of Contents

Google Europe Scholarship for Students with Disabilities

ASSETS 2010 Mentor Program

Mentoring Request

January 2010 SIGACCESS Newsletter Now Available

Table of Contents

ASSETS 2010 Facebook Page

ASSETS 2010 Call For Papers

Topics

Important Dates

Second ACM SIGACCESS Award for Outstanding Contributions to Computing and Accessibility - Call for Nominations

Nomination Procedure

Important Dates

Selection Committee

W4A 2010 Fourth Web Accessibility Challenge Call for Submissions

Goal

Topic

Submission Materials

System Requirements

Important Dates

W4A Google Student Awards

AAAS Problem Solvers Workshop on Engineers with Disabilities

AccessComputing Alliance Has Funding for Undergraduate Research Internships

We welcome applications for the SIGACCESS Scholarship in Computers and Accessibility

September 2009 SIGACCESS Newsletter Now Available

Table of Contents

ASSETS 2009 Student Research Competition Winners

Undergraduate Category

Graduate Category

SIGACCESS Best Paper Award 2009

SIGACCESS Best Student Paper Award 2009

ACM-BCS Visions of Computer Science 2010

Topics

Call for Papers

The Seventh International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A 2010)

Developing Regions: Common Goals, Common Problems?

Web Accessibility Challenge

Submission

Important Dates

Online Course on Designing Accessible Web Forms

Who Should Participate in the Course?

Dates and Registration

Information Systems Department at UMBC Invites Applications for a Tenure-Track Faculty Position in the Area of Human-Centered Computing

Call for Submissions to a Special Issue of ACM Transactions on Computing Education on Broadening Participation

June 2009 SIGACCESS Newsletter Now Available

Table of Contents

ACM Student Research Competition First Place!

SIGACCESS Election Results

Volume 2 , Issue 2 (June 2009) of TACCESS Available Online

Table of Contents