Proceedings of the 2010 International Cross Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

The International Cross Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A) was started in 2004 with the aim of accelerating research activities towards an accessible World Wide Web. Through previous workshops, a growing number of participants from academia, industry, government and nonprofit organisations around the world have gathered to exchange their latest research results, widen their perspectives through discussions with their peers, and establish future research agendas across disciplines and sectors. Each year, we choose a theme to encourage a focus on the emerging challenges in a particular area of accessibility, and for W4A 2010 we posed the question: Developing Regions: Common Goals, Common Problems? A revolution in the information society is now starting, based on the use of mobile phones in developing countries. The hyper-growth of mobile phone penetration is deeply changing the lives of people in most of the world. The promising next step is obviously to access the Web. However, this expansion faces unprecedented accessibility challenges. Even the word "accessibility" needs a new definition for people in the developing regions. How can someone who is illiterate or barely literate access the Web? How do the adoption patterns for Web accessibility and inclusion vary across cultures? Will complex and highly graphical interfaces exclude developing regions from access? All of these constraints compound the problems of access and inclusion. What problems exist, what are the newly appearing problems, and what solutions are required? What effect will the Web in the developing regions have on accessibility in the developed regions and vice versa? We have common goals and common challenges to overcome, but what are they and how can they be addressed to our mutual benefit?