SIGACCESS Annual Report

July 2004 - June 2005
Submitted by: Vicki L. Hanson, Chair

SIGACCESS has moved out of transition and can now enjoy full participation in ACM SIG activities. At our viability review this past spring, SIGACCESS was moved into permanent status. We thank our two newsletter editors, Alan Creak and Simeon Keates, who helped us move out of the transition status. Their diligence in getting us caught up on our newsletters was a major factor in moving the SIG out of transition. Also important, however, were the other activities of the SIG. This annual report is a chance to recap those activities.

ASSETS Conference Updates:

ASSETS'04 (6th in the conference series) was held in Atlanta this past October. New to this year's conference was an NSF sponsored Doctoral Consortium. This consortium allowed advanced doctoral students to present their dissertation topics and get feedback. The top student presentation was selected and that student, Matt Huenerfauth from the University of Pennsylvania, presented his work to all attendees at the closing session of the conference.

The SIGACCESS Business Meeting was held at the conference and an important decision was made regarding the conference. Specifically, the conference will now be an annual event, to be held in the October timeframe of each year. There were a couple of primary reasons motivating this change. First, the ASSETS'04 conference was very positively received by attendees and most expressed the wish to have the event annually to be able to interact with colleagues. Second, it was felt that it would help the SIG maintain the conference momentum to have the event held annually and at a specific time of year. As a result, ASSETS'05 will be held in Baltimore, MD, October 10th - 12th. We look forward to a stimulating conference that will continue to foster interactions among members of our community.

The conference gave two awards:

Best paper: Jacob O. Wobbrock, Brad A. Myers, Htet Htet Aung, and Edmund F. LoPresti. "Text Entry from Power Wheelchairs: EdgeWrite for Joysticks and Touchpads"

Best student paper: Faustina Hwang, Patrick Langdon, John Clarkson, and Simeon Keates. "Mouse Movements of Motion-Impaired Users: A Submovement Analysis"

Publications

As mentioned, our newsletter is up to date on publication. The first online issue appeared in June. This and future online issues will be available on the SIGACCESS website. See SIGACCESS Newsletter.

Also available on the website is the monthly 'Left Field' column by Simon Harper. This column brings up topics and issues in accessibility that arise from ACM publications that might be out of the mainstream of what SIGACCESS members typically read. This column has been wonderfully thought-provoking and we hope many of you are taking advantage of it. See Left Field.

Other Activities

This spring, ACM approved two awards for SIGACCESS. See SIGACCESS Awards.

SIGACCESS Best Paper Award: Awarded annually for the best paper appearing in the ASSETS conference proceedings.

SIGACCESS Best Student Paper Award: Awarded annually for the best paper appearing in the ASSETS conference proceedings where the student is the first author.

Award: The award recipients are presented with a certificate from ACM.

SIGACCESS provided financial support for the International Cross Disciplinary Workshop on Web Accessibility 2005 (W4A) at the WWW Conference in Chiba, Japan, this past May. The workshop was cross-disciplinary, focusing on the topic of 'Engineering Accessible Design'.

SIGACCESS was also a partner of the ACM CHI'05 conference.