Web Accessibility Observatories

People with disabilities are not just a tiny minority of the population world wide. The lowest estimate in the European Union, based on the extremes of currently defined impairment categories, puts their total number at around 44 Million persons (nearly 13% of the population of the EU ). However, other estimates that take into account a) people with cognitive difficulties, and b) those people in the borderline between fully able bodied and the classically termed impaired, should considerably raise those numbers. Designing for people with disabilities is becoming an increasingly important topic for a variety of reasons, especially due to the recent legislation (European Web Accessibility Directive, WAD ) published on 2 December 2016 and entered into force on 22 December 2016 in Europe promoting the rights of disabled people.

The implementation of Web Accessibility in general and of the WAD Directive (‘the Directive’) specifically requires the setting up of digital accessibility observatories to monitor progress in single websites and in wider digital accessibility on the level of organisation, state, country, EU or worldwide.

We invite researcher and practitioner to contribute to this STS with papers answering questions such as:

  • Which approaches  for web accessibility observatories are available?
  • How to conduct user studies with all relevant stakeholder?
  • How to involve disabled user groups in the design of such systems?
  • Which groups may benefit at most from these research areas?
  • Conduct studies   on which reporting technologies e.g. accessibility statements are flexible and effective?
  • How machine learning could contribute to web accessibility observatories?
  • Which hardware/software infrastructure is needed to operate a real world web accessibility observatory?
  • Etc.

Chairs


  • Carlos A Velasco, Digital Health Departmentat - Healthcare Accessibility and Interoperability (HAI), Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology (FIT)

  • Mohamad Yehya, Digital Health Departmentat - Healthcare Accessibility and Interoperability (HAI), Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology (FIT)

Contributions to a STS have to be submitted using the standard submission procedures of ICCHP24.
When submitting your contribution please make sure to select the right STS from the drop-down list "Special Thematic Session". Contributions to a STS are evaluated by the Programme Committee of ICCHP-AAATE and by the chair(s) of the STS. Please get in contact with the STS chair(s) for discussing your contribution and potential involvement in the session.