Unitech2010 is being held during May 19-20, 2010 at the Faculty of Engineering, Oslo University College, in Oslo, Norway. The conference is organized by the National network for Universal ICT – a network of academic institutions, special interest group organizations, industry and research institutes in Norway working on various aspects related to Universal Design, Accessibility and Information Technology. The main intention of the conference is to bring together experts working on technical aspects of universal access and exchange real solution to real problems.
The topics of the conference include web-technologies and web-accessibility, assistive technologies, input, accessible interaction techniques, innovative interaction styles, audio interfaces, gestures and touch, design, prototyping and evaluation methodologies, transportation and public self-service kiosks, education, policy, standardization and guidelines, e-Inclusion and the aging population.
The 23 papers included in this volume have undergone a thorough review process as most papers have been reviewed by four reviewers. The conference is international with authors from countries such as Norway, Sweden, Germany, England, Portugal and the USA. Moreover, we believe that the conference proceedings is the first of its kind. Unlike traditional conference proceedings we chose a format that was designed to be accessible. We decided to use HTML as the basic format. Cascading Style Sheets is used to generate a various set of output formats including these printed proceedings that have the visual appearance of traditional proceedings and the screen reader friendly HTML format available online. We are grateful to the authors who have willingly participated in this experiment.
In additional to the reviewed papers the conference had two keynotes. The opening keynote by Jonathan Hassell of the BBC about the accessibility initiatives at the BBC website and a closing keynote by Kai Olsen about his in-court experiences as a usability expert. Moreover, the conference includes two workshops, one on education and e-inclusion given by Gill Whitney and Suzette Keith of Middlesex University and one held by researchers at the Norwegian Computer Centre on practical user testing where the participants have special needs.
Many people have been involved in the process of realizing this conference. The organizing committee is grateful to the program committee who has reviewed the manuscripts submitted to the conference. The names of the technical program committee members are listed after this foreword. Moreover, the organizers are grateful to staff at Oslo University College who assisted us with issues related to the conference venue, and the staff at Media LT that has helped with secretarial help such as registration and payments. The organizers are also grateful to the Delta Centre and the Research Council of Norway who has provided generous financial support. Finally, the organizers would like to thank Kirsten Ribu for preparing the cover artwork.
We hope this conference has helped authors obtain useful feedback on their work, helped participants expand their research network and given readers of this volume new inspirations and ideas.
Frode Eika Sandnes, Faculty of Engineering, Oslo University College
Magne Lunde, MediaLT
Morten Tollefsen, MediaLT
Aud Marie Hauge, Epinova
Erlend Øverby, Hypatia AS
Rudolph Brynn, Standard Norway