Of potential interest to some MT-scholars, see details below.
Apologies for cross-posting.
*International Journal "Universal Access in the Information Society"
(UAIS) - Springer.*
*http://www.springeronline.com/journal/10209/about*
*Call for Papers**
**Special Issue on "Quality of Media Accessibility Products and Services"*
*Guest-editor: Gian Maria Greco, Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow,
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain.**
*
*About the UAIS Journal*
The UAIS Journal solicits original research contributions addressing the
accessibility, usability and acceptability of the Information Society
Technologies by anyone, anywhere, at anytime, and through any media and
device. Universal access refers to the systematic effort to proactively
apply principles, methods and tools of universal design, in order to
develop Information Society Technologies which are accessible and usable
by all citizens.
The Journal’s unique focus is on theoretical, methodological, and
empirical research, of both a technological and non-technological
nature, that addresses equitable access and active participation of
potentially all citizens in the Information Society.
For further information, please, refer to the “Aims and scope” section
on the Website of the UAIS Journal.
*Aims and scope of this special issue *
The pervasive reshaping of our society by information and communication
technologies has been providing new opportunities but also “difficulties
[…] in accessing multimedia services” (Stephanidis and Emiliani 1999, p.
23) by end users. Understood as a “set of theories, practices, services
and technologies providing access to media content for people that
cannot, or cannot properly, access that content in its original form”
(Greco 2016, p. 11), Media Accessibility (MA) is consequently becoming
increasingly central in providing universal access in the information
society.
MA services and products are now well-established topics within a
variety of contexts, including smart cities, museum education, live
events, tourism, childhood education, second-language acquisition,
filmmaking, and new media. While for a long time its main concern was
providing access to persons with disabilities; in recent years MA has
broadened its scope: it initially sought to include other groups at risk
of cultural and social exclusion such as the elderly, children, and
language minorities, then expanded even further to encompass the human
rights of all. This has made MA a pivotal instrument for addressing the
most pressing concerns of many international bodies as well as a driving
area within the field of Accessibility Studies (Greco 2016; 2018).
The key aim of research on universal access is “to prevent the exclusion
of users from the information society while at the same time increasing
the quality and usability of products and services” (Stephanidis 2009,
p. 1). For a long time now, policies and research involving MA have been
mainly concerned with quantity; e.g. development of solutions for
mainstreaming accessibility as well as the implementation of regulations
that set quotas or impose the widespread adoption of MA services. Now
that in various countries regulations are being implemented and quotas
are being met, attention is shifting over to quality. This holds true
for both policies and research. Taking a closer look at the landscape of
Media Accessibility Quality (MAQ), the resulting picture conveys both a
lively yet scattered scene. Lively, precisely because policy-makers,
industry and researchers have increasingly started to focus on quality
(see e.g. Burchardt et al. 2016; Castro Botega et al. 2017;
Cristóbal-Fransi et al. 2017; Ismailova and Inal 2017; Orehovački and
Babić 2017; Pedersen 2017; Romero-Fresco and Martínez 2015;
Romero-Fresco and Pöchhacker 2017). At the same time, it is scattered,
because attention has been spread out over a very diverse range of
issues while lacking a unified venue for the discussion of quality. This
is needed in order to provide a more efficient and interconnected
account of those issues as well as of other topics strictly related to
quality, such as accuracy, completeness, and reliability.
This UAIS special issue aims to start filling this gap. It will be the
first collective publication to explicitly address, from various angles,
the issue of quality in MA.
*Main topics *
This special issue will focus on research on quality in the context of
the design, development, implementation, evaluation, and use of MA
products and services.
Contributions are solicited in, but not limited to, the following topics:
• Theoretical issues and the theoretical foundation of quality in
Media Accessibility
• The use of Data/Information Quality models and theories to address
quality in MA
• The different dimensions composing MAQ (reliability, accuracy, etc.)
• One-size-fits-all approaches versus context-dependent approaches to MAQ
• Metrics for measuring quality and quality dimensions in MA
• Quality issues in specific MA services and products: subtitling,
audio description, design and localisation video games, web
applications, etc.
• Quality in MA standards, guidelines, and regulations
• The human factor in the definition and assessment of quality in MA
• Quality issues in the use and impact of specific technologies for
providing media accessibility: machine translation, augmented reality,
object-oriented broadcasting, etc.
• The role of MA value chain stakeholders (industry, end-users,
regulators, scholars, etc.) in the definition and evaluation of quality
• The use of experimental methods for the evaluation of quality of MA
services and products, e.g., EEG, galvanic skin response, eye tracking, etc.
*Important dates and Information*
Deadline for submission of papers: 30th of October 2018.
Notification of acceptance: 15th of January 2019.
Deadline for submission of camera-ready version of accepted papers: 15th
of February 2019.
Selected papers from the UMAQ conference 2018
(http://pagines.uab.cat/umaq/umaq-conference) will be invited. Their
presentation at the UMAQ conference will not guarantee publication. Only
papers that have passed blind review as well as screening by the guest
editor and the journal’s editorial staff will be accepted.
*Submission guidelines*
Submissions should be prepared according to the author instructions
available at the journal homepage,
http://www.springer.com/computer/hci/journal/10209. Please see the link
entitled “Instructions for Authors”. Typical manuscript length is 20-30
pages.
Initial manuscripts must be submitted electronically in the form of PDF
file through the Springer Editorial Management System available at
https://www.editorialmanager.com/uais/default.aspx. During the
submission process, please select the article type “S.I.: Quality of
Media Accessibility Products and Services”.
*Reviewing process*
All papers will be peer-reviewed by two reviewers who are experts in the
field, appointed by the Guest Editor of the issue in consultation with
the editors-in-chief of the journal.
*Copyright information*
Submission of an article implies that:
• the work described has not been published before, except in the
form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture, review, or thesis;
• it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere.
For further information, please refer to the “Copyright information”
section on the website of the UAIS Journal.
*Guest Editor*
Gian Maria Greco, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain
(gianmaria.gr...@uab.cat)
*References*
A. Burchardt, A. Lommel, L. Bywood, K. Harris and M. Popović (2016),
Machine translation quality in an audiovisual context, Target, 28(2),
pp. 206-221.
L. Castro Botega, J.O. de Souza, F.R. Jorge, C. Saraiva Coneglian, M.R.
de Campos, V.P. de Almeida Neris, and R. Borges de Araújo (2017),
Methodology for Data and Information Quality Assessment in the Context
of Emergency Situational Awareness, Universal Access in the Information
Society, 16(4), pp. 889-902.
E. Cristóbal-Fransi, F. Hernández-Soriano, and F. Marimon (2017),
Critical factors in the evaluation of online media: creation and
implementation of a measurement scale (e-SQ-Media), Universal Access in
the Information Society, 16(1), pp. 235-246.
G.M. Greco (2018), The Case for Accessibility Studies, Journal of
Audiovisual Translation, 1(1), (forthcoming).
G.M. Greco (2016), On Accessibility as a Human Right, with an
Application to Media Accessibility, in A. Matamala and P. Orero (eds.),
Researching Audio Description. New Approaches, London: Palgrave
Macmillan, pp. 11–33.
R. Ismailova and Y. Inal (2017), Web site accessibility and quality in
use: a comparative study of government Web sites in Kyrgyzstan,
Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkey, Universal Access in the Information
Society, 16(4), pp. 987-996
T. Orehovački and S. Babić (2017), Identifying the relevance of quality
dimensions contributing to universal access of social Web applications
for collaborative writing on mobile devices: an empirical study,
Universal Access in the Information Society.
J. Pedersen (2017), The FAR model: assessing quality in interlingual
subtitling, The Journal of Specialised Translation, 28, pp. 210-229.
P. Romero-Fresco and J. Martínez (2015), Accuracy rate in live
subtitling: The NER model, in J. Díaz Cintas and R. Baños (eds.),
Audiovisual translation in a global context: Mapping an ever-changing
landscape, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 28-50.
P. Romero-Fresco and F. Pöchhacker (2017), Quality assessment in
interlingual live subtitling: The NTR model, Linguistica Antverpiensia,
16, pp. 149-167.
C. Stephanidis (2009), Universal Access and Design for All in the
Evolving Information Society, in C. Stephanidis (ed.), The Universal
Access Handbook, Hoboken, NJ: CRC Press, pp. 1-11.
C. Stephanidis and P.L. Emiliani (1999), Connecting to the Information
Society: a European Perspective, Technology and Disability Journal,
10(1), pp. 21-44.
--
*Gian Maria Greco*
Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at TransMedia Catalonia, Universitat
Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain.
Accessibility Coordinator, Environmental and Cultural System "Porta
d'Oriente", Italy.
The UMAQ Project: http://pagines.uab.cat/umaq
Advisory Board, ACT Project: http://www.actproject.eu
Media Accessibility Platform: http://www.mapaccess.org
Logo of the UMAQ project
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