Proceedings of the 17th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers & Accessibility

It is our great pleasure to welcome you to the 17th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2015). The ASSETS conference has a long-standing tradition of exploring the design, evaluation, and use of computing and information technologies to benefit people with disabilities and older adults. This year, in its 17th edition, ASSETS 2015 is again the premier forum for presenting innovative research on mainstream and specialized assistive technologies, accessible computing, and assistive applications of computer, network, and information technologies. The call for papers attracted submissions from Australia (1), Austria (4), Belgium (2), Brazil (11), Canada (2), China (1), France (8), Germany (4), India (2), Ireland (1), Israel (2), Italy (3), Japan (1), Netherlands (2), Portugal (8), Puerto Rico (1), Republic of Korea (1), Saudi Arabia (1), Singapore (1), Spain (4), Sweden (1), Switzerland (1), United Kingdom (12), and the United States (53). Our growing community generated more technical paper submissions than ever before at an ASSETS conference, and we had the immense pleasure to work with our technical program committee to decide which would be accepted to the conference. We received 127 submissions from which we selected 30 for inclusion in the program, for an acceptance rate of 23%. For the first time at ASSETS, decisions were made by consensus of the program committee members, who discussed the papers extensively both online and via video calls. The program committee also reviewed 81 posters submissions (49 accepted) and 18 demo submissions (15 accepted). The program committee consisted of 42 senior members of our committee who worked with 5 advanced doctoral systems to produce a total of 381 reviews. We would like to thank them for their incredibly diligent and considered work. The ASSETS 2015 program is organized as follows: On Monday (Day 1), the program starts with a keynote presentation by Dr. Jon Schull who is the President of the Enable Community Foundation. Dr. Schull's keynote is titled as \"Enabling the future: Crowdsourced 3D-printed prosthetics as model for open source assistive technology innovation and mutual aid\" and he will tell us about the fantastic work that he and e-NABLE are doing in the area of crowdsourcing 3D-printed prosthetic hands. Following the keynote, we will have a series of technical paper sessions organized around Speech Technologies, Reading and Language, and New Perspectives on Accessibility Research. The day will end with a Reception and hands-on Demo Session with awards for the best demos! On Tuesday (Day 2), the program will continue with sessions on Non-Visual Access to Graphics, Sign Language, 3D Interaction, Accessibility and Work, and Exercise and Physical Activity. We will also hear short talks from the finalists in the ACM Student Research Competition. The day will conclude with a special reception at a historic Lisbon Museum supported by the Paciello Group. Awards for the Best Paper and the Best Student Paper will be given at this reception. On Wednesday (Day 3), the program will conclude with technical sessions on Making Speech Accessible and Usable, Accessibility and Cognition, Text Input, and Improving Non-Visual Access. We will then turn over the reigns to next year's chairs to tell you about ASSETS 2016.