A note from the Editor

Simeon Keates

E-mail: editors_SIGACCESS@acm.org

Dear SIGACCESS member:

Welcome to another issue of the SIGACCESS Newsletter and it is a real bumper issue with almost 60 pages of articles.

This issue is also a little different to those that have preceded it. This Newsletter begins with 3 regular articles, but the remainder of the Newsletter is something of a celebration of the diversity of the SIG members. 11 members were selected at random from the database and asked to provide profiles of their research projects, background and motivation for working in this area. The aim of these articles is to help personalise SIGACCESS and give Newsletter readers, especially those who do not have the opportunity to attend the SIG sponsored conferences such as ASSETS, a chance to learn more about other members of SIGACCESS.

About this issue

We begin with a call for participation for the AccessComputing initiative by Sheryl Burgstahler and Richard Ladner of the University of Washington. AccessComputing is an alliance to increase the participation of individuals with disabilities in computing careers.

This is followed by an article on "Challenges and Solutions for Screen Reader / I.T. Interoperability" by Kip Harris of IBM in which he discusses the inherent difficulties in extracting the underlying meaning of interfaces via a screen reader and potential methods for achieving such extraction.

Finally, of the regular articles, Simon Harper, Yeliz Yesilada and Carole Goble of the University of Manchester present a report on the 2006 W4A - International Cross-Disciplinary Workshop on Web Accessibility Workshop Report, sponsored by SIGACCESS.

The remaining articles in this issue are the membership profiles of: Julio Abascal, Joan Francioni, Matt Huenerfauth, Frankie James, Blaise W. Liffick, Edmund LoPresti, Kathleen F. McCoy, Jessica Paradise Elliott, David Sloan, Andrea Tartaro and Jim Thatcher.

And finally...

This issue finishes with the call for participation for ASSETS 2006. While the deadline for technical papers has passed, there is still time to submit posters and demonstration papers and also to submit entries for the Doctoral Consortium and the all new Student Research Competition. These last two categories include significant funding support for the authors of accepted entries. With funding potentially available for up to 37 students, they offer excellent opportunities for students on a budget to participate in the ASSETS conference.

The ASSETS web-site can be found at:

http://www.acm.org/sigaccess/assets06/