SIGACCESS FY’14 Annual Report July 2013 – June 2014 Submitted by: Andrew Sears SIGACCESS continues to refine its activities to meet member needs. This report highlights SIGACCESS Awards as well as the SIG’s conference, publication, and other activities. Awards SIGACCESS Best Paper Award Kotaro Hara, Shiri Azenkot, Megan Campbell, Cynthia L. Bennett, Vicki Le, Sean Pannella, Robert Moore, Kelly Minckler, Rochelle H. Ng, and Jon E. Froehlich. 2013. Improving public transit accessibility for blind riders by crowdsourcing bus stop landmark locations with Google street view. In Proceedings of the 15th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '13). ACM, New York, NY, USA, , Article 16 , 8 pages. DOI=10.1145/2513383.2513448 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2513383.2513448 SIGACCESS Best Student Paper Award Kathrin M. Gerling, Regan L. Mandryk, and Michael R. Kalyn. 2013. Wheelchair-based game design for older adults. In Proceedings of the 15th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '13). ACM, New York, NY, USA, , Article 27 , 8 pages. DOI=10.1145/2513383.2513436 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2513383.2513436 SIGACCESS Paper Impact Award This award is to be presented every other year (in odd-numbered years) to the authors of an ASSETS conference paper that has had a significant impact on computing and information technology that addresses the needs of persons with disabilities. Technical papers presented 10 or more years prior to the award year are eligible. The award will recognize work that presents a significant innovation or contribution to knowledge that has proved influential. For 2013, the award was presented to Chieko Asakawa and Takashi Itoh for their paper "User Interface of a Home Page Reader" which was published in the Proceedings of ASSETS 1998 The Third International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Assistive Technologies. SIGACCESS Scholarship in Computers and Accessibility The SIGACCESS Scholarship Award aims to provide support for participation in the ASSETS conference for individuals who would not otherwise be able to attend. Practitioners, researchers, members of advocacy groups, or individuals with disabilities are eligible to apply. Applicants must have a demonstrated interest in accessible computing. Awardees will have the opportunity 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 awards up to five scholarships per year, pending availability of funds. The 2013 scholarships were awarded to Sylvia Grant, Reuben Kirkham, Donna Pettick, DeKita Moon, and João Guerreiro to attend ASSETS 2013. In addition, consistent with the mission of SIGACCESS, we provided travel support for an assistant that needed to travel with one of the recipients. Supporting ACM-W Scholarships Beginning with ASSETS 2010, SIGACCESS has supported the ACM-W Scholarship program by providing a complimentary registration to ACM-W Scholarship recipients. There was no ACM-W scholarship recipient for ASSETS 2013. Significant Programs ASSETS Conference ASSETS 2013 was held in Bellevue, Washington. The number of submissions was the highest in history at 98 with submissions from numerous countries spanning a variety of topics. The acceptance rate, just below 30%, was consistent with recent history. Attendance was solid, and the conference was profitable. As has become the norm, the conference featured an NSF sponsored Doctoral Consortium (see the January 2014 issue of the SIGACCESS Accessible Computing Newsletter). This consortium allowed doctoral students to present their dissertation topics and receive feedback during formative stages of their work. The conference also hosted a Microsoft Student Research Competition (SRC) event (see information about the winners of the competition above). New to the ASSETS conference in 2013 was a captioning competition. Since captioning is an active area of research for a number of groups in the ASSETS community, we invited participants for a competition that was held at ASSETS 2013 in which teams used their technology to caption one or more of the sessions. Our aim was to promote research that will make it possible for ASSETS, and other organizations, to create captions of good quality at very low cost. ASSETS 2013 also introduced a user experience panel and new submission venue for 'experience reports'. These consist of direct reports from people with disabilities on their use of technology. The panel was very well received at the conference. The SIGACCESS Business Meeting, held at ASSETS, updated attendees on SIG activities and discussed ideas for new activities. We continued discussions regarding supporting workshops or other smaller events that were more focused with regard to topic or geographical location. ASSETS offers a mentoring program to authors who are new to the conference as well as authors who are new to presenting research or are submitting work to a new category. Authors who are not familiar with preparing papers in English can also seek assistance. Mentors are experienced ASSETS authors, providing advice to the prospective authors about how their work may fit with the conference and how to effectively present their ideas. Normally, mentoring does not include detailed copyediting. This year, the mentoring program received 15 requests with two resulting in full papers being accepted for presentation at ASSETS 2013 and one leading to participation in the Doctoral Consortium. To provide some context, the conference normally receives approximately 100 full paper submissions. ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing The inaugural issue of the ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing (TACCESS) appeared in May 2008. Volume one included three issues, with volumes two and three both including the full set of four issues. The number of submissions continues to grow. TACCESS is a quarterly journal that publishes refereed articles addressing issues of computing as it impacts the lives of people with disabilities. It provides a technical forum for disseminating innovative research related to computing technologies and their use by people with disabilities. The SIGACCESS newsletter continues with its regular online publications: see http://www.sigaccess.org/community/newsletter/. Jinjuan Feng (Towson University) has served as the Newsletter Editor since June 2010, with Hugo Nicolau scheduled to assume the role in September 2014. SIGACCESS Website The SIGACCESS webmaster is Joshua Halpern (HP Labs). He recently redesigned the SIGACCESS web site for easier maintenance. The SIGACCESS web site provides information about the SIG’s activities including awards and conferences as well as a repository of dissertations and theses, our newsletter, writing guidelines, and other resources, which may be of value to the community. Innovative programs SIGACCESS has developed several resources, which are made available to the community at large via the SIGACCESS web site. The first is a set of writing guidelines, which reflect current thinking on language for writing in the academic accessibility community. Certain words or phrases can (intentionally or unintentionally) reflect bias or negative, disparaging, or patronizing attitudes toward people with disabilities and in fact any identifiable group of people. Choosing language that is neutral, accurate, and represents the preference of the groups to which it refers can convey respect and integrity. The second resource is a guide for planning accessible conferences. This document contains information for organizers of academic conferences who wish to make their events as accessible as possible, so that people with disabilities can participate fully. SIGACCESS is updating a third community resource on creating accessible PDF documents, in both video and document form. The current version will be pilot tested by ASSETS 2014 authors preparing their camera-ready papers. SIGACCESS was pleased to support a workshop held in conjunction with the ECRC event in May 2013 in Paris. The workshop, titled Towards an Inclusive Europe: Reflections on the Digital Agenda for eAccessibility (http://www.inclusive-europe.eu/), attracted participants from numerous countries and featured a presentation by ACM President Vint Cerf. The purpose of the workshop was to consider what progress has been made towards the eAccessibility aspirations in Europe and propose ways in which European stakeholders can push the digital agenda for eAccessibility further forward. Key Issues Moving forward, there are a number of issues that SIGACCESS must address including developing future leaders for the community and continuing our efforts to reach new audiences. The SIG is actively engaged in developing leaders, recruiting new members of the community to participate both in the conference organizing committee and in other SIG activities. To reach new audiences, and become a more international organization, the SIG arranges for ASSETS to be periodically held in Europe. At this time, we are finalizing plans for ASSETS 2015 to be held in Lisbon. We were pleased that ASSETS continues to receive numerous submissions and has very strong attendance. We will be considering the possibility of holding ASSETS outside of the US more frequently. SIGACT FY’14 Annual Report July, 2013 – June, 2014 Submitted by: Paul Beame 1. Awards . 2014 Gödel Prize: This was awarded to Ronald Fagin, Amnon Lotem, and Moni Naor for their paper “Optimal