At this stage the W3C RDWG is looking for feedback on the research report before September 30th, 2012 via public-wai-rd-comments@w3.org

The Group is working on the Indie UI: Events 1.0 specification – providing an abstraction between device-specific user interaction events and inferred user intent – and the Indie UI: User Context 1.0 specification – defining a set of properties and methods related to the environmental context of a specific user, and a vehicle to access them, facilitating a Web application’s ability to adapt to the user’s needs.

The report describes a technical evaluation of the JavaScript code, which was injected using a Google Chrome extension. 20 of the Alexa top 25 Web pages were tested, resulting in interaction with 100 different instances of dynamic content. Classification was found to be correct in all cases, although the update aggregation system did not always perform as expected.

You can download the “Technical evaluation of the update classification system” technical report at http://wel-eprints.cs.manchester.ac.uk/156/

The BBC is one of the world’s most popular websites, with 20 million users every day. Building a site that can handle such a large amount of traffic, whilst still being quick, reliable, and fresh, is extremely challenging. Matthew Clark, Chief technical architect for the Sport and Olympic sites, gave his talk on the Wednesday, 25 April 2012. He looked at the technical architecture of BBC Online, to understand how it handles such a wide variety of content at the performance users expect, even at the busiest moments. He also discussed how the underlying data is stored and handled, and at the increasing importance of handling mobiles, tablets, and internet-connected TVs. As a case study he looked at the BBC’s coverage of this summer’s Olympics, which with live video and data from all 36 sports, will be BBC Online’s biggest ever project.

The Web Ergonomics Lab (WEL) engages with the public and standardization bodies through a variety of channels. One of which is our active involvement with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) groups. Simon Harper is chairing the Research and Development Working Group (RDWG) and is an active member of the User Agent Working Group; Markel Vigo is also a member of the RDWG and is one of the editors of a research note on web accessibility metrics which is about to be released; and Alex Q. Chen is a member of the Protocols and Formats Working Group.

Paper entitled “Understanding Web Accessibility and Its Drivers” by Yeliz Yesilada, Giorgio Brajnik, Markel Vigo and Simon Harper has been accepted in W4A 2012 conference, which will be held in Lyon on the 16-17 of April, 2012.

The paper describes the results of a survey where 300 people with interest in web accessibility gave their views on the topic “in an attempt to harmonise our understanding and support the expectations of users outside the community. We find that misunderstanding accessibility definitions, language, and terms might cause tension between different groups. That social, and not economic, aspects drive our perspectives of accessibility, and that definitions used by standards and regulatory bodies are most accepted ­ not those of individual experts. Forcing accessibility adoption does not encourage the acceptance of an accessibil­ ity ethos, but providing empirical evidence that accessibility bene­ fits all, does. Finally, realistic and concise language was preferred when attempting to communicate, or define accessibility.”

*The quoted text is from the abstract of the paper.

Keynotes

Keynote by James Hendler (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, USA) on “Increasing Access to the Web of “Broad Data” – Tuesday 17

After-Dinner Speech delivered by Alan F Newell (University of Dundee, Scotland): “Usability, Demography, and Directions for W4A” – Monday 16

Monday, 16 April

• 08:00-09:00 Registration
• 09:00-09:30 Opening
• 09:30-10:30 Session 1: Accessible Web 2.0
• 11:00-12:30 Session 2: Evaluating Accessibility
• 14:00-15:30 Session 3: Novel Views on Web Accessibility
• 16:00-16:30 Google Student Awards
• 16:30-17:40 Microsoft Accessibility Challenge
• 19:00 onwards, Dinner and “William Loughborough” After Dinner Speech by Alan F Newell

Tuesday, 17 April

• 09:30-10:30 Keynote by James Hendler
• 11:00-12:30 Session 4: Designing Web Accessibility
• 14:00-15:40 Session 5: Dyslexia and Sign Language on the Web
• 16:00-17:10 Session 6: Innovative Accessibility Techniques and Studies
• 17:10-17:30 Awards and Closing
• 17:30 onwards, unofficial social event

Crazy Wednesday, 18 April

• Full day: W4A Camp
• Evening: WWW/W4A Panel

Endorsement & Sponsors

This year W4A is endorsed by the IW3C2 in cooperation with the ACM and its Special Interest Groups SIGACCESS, SIGCHI and SIGWEB. The general conference is supported by Microsoft, Google and the Zakon Group; the Web Accessibility Challenge is sponsored by Microsoft and the Student Awards are sponsored by Google.

W4A stats

Average downloads per article at the ACM Digital Library is 441 and the average number of citations is 3.06. To see the stats check the ACM Digital Library site for the W4A conference.

Fees, Registration and Accommodation

Check registration and accommodation. Fees are 330€ for regular attendees and 280€ for students.

You can get access to all the lectures on YouTube; and you can also get all the material, slides, notes, videos, etc at: http://ocw.cs.manchester.ac.uk/ux/

Aitor Apaolaza is a PhD Student in the CDT programme of the School of Computer Science at The University of Manchester. He will be under the supervision of Dr. Simon Harper in the Web Ergonomics Lab in the Information Management Group. During his PhD project he will design a framework to collect interaction data from users and provide a visualization tool. This framework will analyse websites usage to help look for patterns in user behaviours. Aitor received his Computer Science degree from the University of the Basque Country in 2010. Before applying for the CDT programme in the University of Manchester, Aitor was a junior researcher at a research centre in the Basque Country.