Proceedings of the 2006 international cross-disciplinary workshop on Web accessibility (W4A) Building the mobile web: rediscovering accessibility? - W4A

Abstract

After the launch of the Mobile Web Initiative at the World Wide Web Conference 2005 we are beginning to realise that, today, mobile Web access suffers from interoperability and usability problems that make the Web difficult to use. With the move to small screen size, low bandwidth, and different operating modalities, technology is in effect simulating the sensory and cognitive impairments experienced by disabled users within the wider population of mobile device users. In this our third workshop we ask the question "Is engineering, designing, and building for the mobile Web just a rehash of the same old Web accessibility problems?"These proceedings bring together a cross section of the Web design, accessibility and mobile Web communities. The papers included here report on developments, discuss the issues, and suggest cross-pollinated solutions.Conventional workshops on accessibility tend to be single disciplinary in nature. However, we are concerned that this focus on a single participant group prevents the cross-pollination of ideas, needs, and technologies from other related but separate fields. As with the first, this second workshop is decidedly cross disciplinary in nature and brings together users, accessibility experts, graphic designers, and technologists from academia and industry to discuss how accessibility can be supported. We also encourage the participation of users and other interested parties as an additional balance to the discussion. Our aim is to focus on accessibility by encouraging participation from many disciplines. Views often bridge academia, commerce, and industry and arguments encompass a range of beliefs across the design-accessibility spectrum.